Intelligent navigation of multiple coordinated robots

Abstract

Navigation of multiple robots is a challenging task, particularly for many robots, since individual gains may more often than not adversely affect global gain. This paper investigates the problem of multiple robots moving towards individual goals within a common workspace without colliding amongst themselves. Two solutions for coordination namely Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) and Genetic Algorithm based FLC (GA-FLC) have been employed and the efficacy of cooperation strategies have been compared with their non-cooperative counterparts as well as with the fundamental potential field method (PFM). Proposed coordination schemes are verified through simulations. A total of 100 scenarios are considered varying the number of robots (8, 12, 16 and 20). The obtained results show the efficacy of the proposed schemes.