Collision free cooperative navigation of multiple wheeled robots in unknown cluttered environments

When employing autonomous wheeled robots, it is desirable to use navigation approaches that always prevent collisions. In this paper, we consider the problem of navigating multiple vehicles through an unknown static environment with limited sensing and communication capabilities available. We propose a decentralized, cooperative, reactive, model predictive control based collision avoidance scheme that plans short range paths in the currently sensed part of the environment, and show that it is able to prevent collisions from occurring. An auxiliary controller is employed to follow previously planned paths whenever the main path planning system fails to update the path. Simulations and real-world testing in various scenarios confirm the methods validity.

► Robust collision avoidance for groups of nonholonomic vehicles with disturbances. ► Model predictive type approach with simplified planning algorithm. ► Novel constraints allowing minimal latency to mutual action. ► Auxiliary sliding mode path following controller with bounded path deviation. ► Simulations and real world testing.