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Prioritized planning algorithm for multi-robot collision avoidance based on artificial untraversable vertex

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Abstract

This paper presents a method to avoid collisions and deadlocks between mobile robots working collaboratively in a shared physical environment. Based on the shared knowledge of the robot’s direction and coordinates, we define five conflict types between robots and propose a new concept named Artificial Untraversable Vertex (AUV) to resolve the potential conflicts. Since conflict avoidance between robots is typically a real-time process, a heuristic search algorithm D* Lite with fast replanning characteristics is introduced. Once a robot finds that it may collide with another robot while moving along the preplanned path, a new conflict-free path can be calculated based on the AUV and D* Lite. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed Multi-Robot Path Planning (MRPP) method can effectively avoid collisions and deadlocks between mobile robots.

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Data availability

All data, models generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.

Code availability

All codes generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.

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Funding

This work is supported by the Sichuan Science and Technology Program (2020YFG0115) and Chengdu Science and Technology Program (2019-YF05-00958-SN).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Electrical Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Haodong Li, Tao Zhao & Songyi Dian

Authors
  1. Haodong Li
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  2. Tao Zhao
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  3. Songyi Dian
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Contributions

The study is conceived and designed by Haodong Li. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Haodong Li and Tao Zhao, and revised by Tao Zhao and Songyi Dian. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Tao Zhao.

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Li, H., Zhao, T. & Dian, S. Prioritized planning algorithm for multi-robot collision avoidance based on artificial untraversable vertex. Appl Intell 52, 429–451 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-021-02397-0

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