Experimental Validation of a Multirobot Distributed Receding Horizon Motion Planning Approach

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of motion planning for a multirobot system in a partially known environment where conditions such as uncertainty about robots' positions and communication delays are real. In particular, we detail the use of a Distributed Receding Horizon Approach that guarantees collision avoidance with static obstacles and between robots communicating with each other. Underlying optimization problems are solved by using a Sequential Least Squares Programming algorithm. Experiments with real nonholonomic mobile platforms are performed. The proposed framework is compared with the Dynamic Window approach to motion planning in a single robot setup. A second experiment shows results for a multirobot case using two robots where collision is avoided even in presence of significant localization uncertainties.