Coordination of Multiple Robots with Assigned Paths

This paper describes a method for coordinating the motions of a group of robots following predefined paths in a common workspace. Coordination Diagrams (CD) are used for representing the possible collisions among the robots. We propose an algorithm that computes a complete coordination plan for the overall missions that each vehicle has to execute. The algorithm generates a set of possible coordination plans and then gives the optimal one. Previous works apply traditional path planning techniques (such as D* or A*) to compute a coordinated motion. However these techniques do not take into account the fact that the CD has a cylindrical structure. This features enables our algorithm to explore the CD in a more efficient way.