A hybrid navigation strategy for multiple mobile robots

A hybrid navigation strategy is proposed in this paper for solving the navigation problem of multiple mobile robots. The proposed strategy integrates three algorithms that represent three different types of existing methods in a layered system. The bottom-up architecture of this system is the main contribution of this paper. This architecture pursues reliable low-level layers that can independently work in as much cases as possible, and the high-level layer is used only when it is necessary for guaranteeing convergence in complex situations. The simulation results show that the proposed strategy has well combined the algorithms of different types from the perspective of pursuing reactivity in the premise of ensuring convergence. Compared with the traditional top-down hybrid architecture, the bottom-up architecture proposed in this paper is more suitable for multi-robot navigation since it can better utilize the advantages of different algorithms to deal with different situations. The experiments on real robots have further verified the applicability of the proposed strategy.

► A multi-robot navigation strategy combining three algorithms is proposed.
► A bottom-up hybrid manner is adopted to pursue reactivity and ensure convergence.
► Simulations show that three algorithms are well used to deal with different cases.
► The applicability of the hybrid strategy is further verified by real experiments.