Dynamic Navigation Buffers for Multi-Robot Collision Avoidance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing navigation techniques for multiple robots in indoor environments, such as data centers, face challenges in efficiently exploring and monitoring without interference, especially as the environment is fully mapped, and current methods do not effectively manage robot distance and path planning to prevent collisions.
Innovation Solution
The solution involves using a varying potential field approach to maintain a minimum distance between robots by adjusting the size of navigation buffers based on the percentage of the environment remaining to be explored, combined with a breadth-first search algorithm to determine paths and prevent overlapping exploration areas.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If multiple robots navigate an environment using fixed-size navigation buffers, then robots maintain safe distance from each other, but navigation efficiency decreases as the environment is fully explored
Solution Approach 1:
The navigation buffer size is made dynamic rather than fixed. As robots explore the environment and the remaining unexplored area decreases, the navigation buffer size automatically reduces. This allows robots to maintain safe distances when exploration is intensive while enabling closer, more efficient navigation when the environment is mostly mapped, thus resolving the contradiction between collision-free navigation and navigation efficiency
2Productivity
If multiple robots explore an environment simultaneously, then exploration coverage increases, but robots interfere with each other's navigation paths
Solution Approach 1:
Each robot is assigned a local navigation buffer zone that ensures safe distances from other robots. The buffer zones are dynamically adjusted based on the global exploration state. This local quality control allows multiple robots to operate simultaneously without interference, maintaining both high exploration coverage and smooth navigation coordination
3Reliability
If navigation buffers are maintained at a fixed size, then robot safety is ensured, but computational costs increase unnecessarily in later exploration stages
Solution Approach 1:
The navigation buffer parameter is changed dynamically based on the exploration progress. When the percentage of unexplored environment is high, larger buffers ensure robot safety. As exploration progresses and the unexplored area decreases, the buffer size parameter is reduced, lowering computational costs while maintaining adequate safety margins. This parameter adaptation resolves the contradiction between robot safety and computational efficiency
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques are provided for discovery and monitoring of an environment using a plurality of robots. A plurality of robots navigate an environment by determining a navigation buffer for each of the robots; and allowing each of the robots to navigate within the environment while maintaining a substantially minimum distance from other robots, wherein the substantially minimum distance corresponds to the navigation buffer, and wherein a size of each of the navigation buffers is reduced over time based on a percentage of the environment that remains to be navigated. The robots can also navigate an environment by obtaining a discretization of the environment to a plurality of discrete regions; and determining a next unvisited discrete region for one of the plurality of robots to explore in the exemplary environment using a breadth-first search. The plurality of discrete regions can be, for example, a plurality of real or virtual tiles.