Safe coordination of robots in cyclic paths

This paper presents a MILP (mixed integer linear programming) based formulation for the coordination of multiple robots. We consider robots that must follow closed intersecting paths persistently. We propose an off-line planning of velocity profiles preventing the need of online collision avoidance maneuvers or path replanning. Our robot model considers minimum and maximum speed constraints, which allows our strategy to be applied to fixed-wing aerial robots. We also deal with three important other issues which are usually disregarded in the related literature: minimum spatial separation; acceleration limits; and uncertainties on the speeds and positions. Simulations with up to 48 robots show the efficiency of our strategy. A real experiment with 3 actual e-puck robots is presented in order to demonstrate the robustness of our formulation in a real world scenario. (C) 2020 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.