Article:  Wong, KW; Kress-Gazit, H; “Need-based Coordination for Decentralized High-level Robot Control”, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and System (IROS 2016), 2209-2216

Abstract:  We consider multiple robots operating in a shared workspace, each given a high-level task specification in the form of Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formulas. The robots have no a priori knowledge about the tasks of the other robots and might run into conflicts during task execution. In this work, we develop algorithms that allow the robots to autonomously resolve conflicts and complete their tasks with correctness guarantees, when possible.

In our approach, the robots autonomously detect conflicts and trigger coordination within the subgroup of robots in conflict. The need-based coordination initiates the execution of a global robot controller on each robot in the subgroup until the robots all reach their current goals. The subgroup of robots then return to their local controllers and continue their execution. Our approach captures both the advantage of decentralized robot control and that of centralized robot control. The transition between centralized and decentralized robot control is seamless with guarantees provided.

Funding Acknowledgement:  NSF CAREER [CNS-0953365]; NSF ExCAPE

Funding Text:  This work was supported by NSF CAREER award CNS-0953365 and NSF ExCAPE .