Navigation of Multiple Disk-Shaped Robots with Independent Goals within Obstacle-Cluttered Environments

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Control Systems
• Computational Geometry

Background:

• Multi-robot systems require robust navigation strategies in complex environments.
• Existing methods may suffer from computational complexity or suboptimal path planning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a hybrid control scheme for disk-shaped robots in cluttered planar workspaces.
• To ensure safe and efficient navigation from an initial to a desired configuration.

Main Methods:

• Hierarchical cell decomposition to identify necessary subdivisions of the configuration space.
• Harmonic transformations and harmonic potential fields for safe transitions between cells.
• Comparative simulation analysis to evaluate performance.

Main Results:

• The proposed hierarchical cell decomposition avoids redundant expansions.
• Harmonic potential fields ensure safe transitions and almost-global convergence.
• Simulations demonstrate the scheme's efficacy, superior simplicity, and satisfactory performance.

Conclusions:

• The hybrid control scheme effectively addresses robotic navigation in cluttered environments.
• The method offers a computationally efficient alternative without path optimization.
• The approach ensures reliable convergence to the target configuration.