Coordination of multiple vehicles for area coverage tasks

— Area coverage operations such as plowing a field or mowing a lawn can be performed faster if multiple vehicles are involved. To use a team of automated vehicles safely and effectively they must be coordinated to avoid collisions and deadlock situations. Unexpected events may occur during the operation which may affect vehicles’ velocities, so the coordination method must be robust with respect to these events. In this paper, a path coordination method is introduced which delays decisions about mission coordination as long as possible during mission execution so such unexpected situations are efficiently handled. The method’s computation speed and solution quality are evaluated through simulation, and compared with two other methods based on common path coordination techniques.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: IROS
• Authors: Garrett Dean Winward, Nicholas S. Flann
• Keywords: Coordination Method, IROS 2007, Path Coordination, Path Coordination Method, Robotics