Lazy auctions for multi-robot collision avoidance and motion control under uncertainty

• Published in: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Advanced Agent Technology pp. 295 - 312
• Main Authors: Calliess, Jan-P., Lyons, Daniel, Hanebeck, Uwe D.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Heidelberg Springer-Verlag 02.05.2011
• Series: ACM Conferences
• ISBN: 9783642272158; 3642272150
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-27216-5_21

We present an auction-flavored multi-robot planning mechanism where coordination is to be achieved on the occupation of atomic resources modeled as binary inter-robot constraints. Introducing virtual obstacles, we show how this approach can be combined with particle-based obstacle avoidance methods, offering a decentralized, auction-based alternative to previously established centralized approaches for multi-robot open-loop control. We illustrate the effectiveness of our new approach by presenting simulations of typical spatially-continuous multi-robot path-planning problems and derive bounds on the collision probability in the presence of uncertainty.