Space-time cellular automata in multiple mobile robots motion-planning

In this paper is described a fast Motion-Planner for Multi-robot composed by mobile robots having generic shapes and sizes (user defined) and different kinematics. A new algorithm has been developed to compute the shortest collision-free path for each robot while considering their real shapes, the kinematics constraints, and avoiding the collisions with static and dynamical obstacles (e.g. other robots). It is based on a directional (anisotropic) propagation of attracting potential values in a 4D Space-Time, using a Multilayered Cellular Automata (MCA) architecture. This algorithm makes a search for all the optimal collision-free trajectories following the minimum valley of a potential hypersurface embedded in a 5D space.