Collective navigation of a multi-robot system in an unknown environment

Abstract The navigation of autonomous, mobile multi-robot systems in changing environments is a challenging problem investigated over the past years. Cooperative, multiple robots are employed for many different tasks to increase the efficiency and success of a mission. However, many of the existing collective path planning approaches do not guarantee a reliable escape in environments with complex, non-convex obstacles without any prior knowledge. In this study, we developed a navigation framework for multi-robot systems in unknown areas that solely exploit the sensing information and shared data among the agents. The key contribution of this paper is the simultaneous, collision-free motion planning for fully autonomous robots in a collective manner. Furthermore, our communication architecture enables the robots to find an appropriate path to a desired, joint target position, despite the limited sensing and communication range.