Coordination of several robots based on temporal synchronization

•On-line coordination method for multirobot systems.•Given the next configuration of the robots assure a collision free execution.•Propose two heuristics to determine the possible next configuration of the robots.

This paper proposes an approach to deal with the problem of coordinating multi-robot systems, in which each robot executes individually planned tasks in a shared workspace. The approach is a decoupled method that can coordinate the participating robots in on-line mode. The coordination is achieved through the adjustment of the time evolution of each robot along its original planned geometric path according to the movements of the other robots to assure a collision-free execution of their respective tasks. To assess the proposed approach different tests were performed in graphical simulations and real experiments.