Collision-free motion coordination of heterogeneous robots

This paper proposes a method to coordinate the motion of multiple heterogeneous robots on a network. The proposed method uses prioritization and avoidance. Priority is assigned to each robot; a robot with lower priority avoids the robots of higher priority. To avoid collision with other robots, elastic force and potential field force are used. Also, the method can be applied separately to the motion planning of a part of a robot from that of the other parts of the robot. This is useful for application to the robots of the type mobile manipulator or highly redundant robots. The method is tested by simulation, and it results in smooth and adaptive coordination in an environment with multiple heterogeneous robots.