Coverage of a Planar Point Set With Multiple Robots Subject to Geometric Constraints

This paper focuses on the assignment of discrete points among K robots and determining the order in which the points should be processed by the robots, in the presence of geometric and kinematic constraints between the robots. This is a path planning problem that arises as a subproblem in the decoupled approach to solving the motion planning problem of covering a point set by a multiple robot system in minimum time. More concretely, our work is motivated by an industrial microelectronics manufacturing system with two robots, with square footprints, that are constrained to translate along a line while satisfying proximity and collision avoidance constraints. The N points lie on a planar base plate that can translate along the plane normal to the direction of motion of the robots. The geometric constraints on the motions of the two robots lead to constraints on points that can be processed simultaneously. We use a two step approach to solve the path planning problem: (1) Splitting Proble...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TASE
• Authors: Nilanjan Chakraborty, Srinivas Akella, John T. Wen
• Keywords: Geometric Constraints, Robots, Software Engineering, Splitting Problem, TASE 2010