Collision avoidance by planning in spatially definded, dynamic robot groups

The increasing number of mobile robots employed in industrial automation requires that spatial resource conflicts are resolved efficiently. Such conflicts especially evolve at critical spots, e.g. at the intersection of paths! In this article, an approach to this problem is presented, in which the robots that are situated in the environment of a critical spot form a group and determine the relevant part of the global world view at runtime. Based on this common view, each robot determines its velocity profile in such away that a collision free and efficient traversal of the critical spot is achieved. The feasibility of the approach has been assessed in an application prototype.