A Scheme for Coordinating Multi-robot Planning Activities and Plans Execution

We present and discuss a generic scheme for multi-robot cooperation based on an incremental and distributed plan-merging process. Each robot, autonomously and incrementally builds and executes its own plans taking into account the multi-robot context. The robots are assumed to be able to collect the other robots plans and to coordinate their own plans with the other robots plans to produce \co-ordinated plans" that ensure their proper execution. We discuss the properties of this cooperative paradigm (co-herence, detection of deadlock situations, ...) , how i t \ l l s the gap" between centralized and distributed planning and the class of applications for which i t i s w ell suited. We nally illustrate this scheme through an implemented system which allows a eet of autonomous mobile robots to perform load transfer tasks in a route network environment with a very limited centralized activity and important gains in system exibility and robustness to execution contingencies