A Novel, RRT* Based Approach to the Coordination of Multiple Planetary Rovers

The use of multiple autonomous rovers could significantly extend the scientific capabilities of future planetary exploration missions. Central to this is the ability to safely coordinate the planned paths of such robots. Previous work has shown that RRT* is a method well suited to single-agent path planning. The aim of this work is to evaluate the use of a RRT* path planner first for a single planetary rover, then applied to different coordination strategies for a small team of rovers as a multi-agent method of path planning. Two centralised coordination methodologies are applied: fixed-path coordination and prioritised planning. An evaluation is carried out, based on a comparison of the number of collisions and the time taken to plan paths, where the prioritised planning coordination algorithm is selected as the most appropriate for this application. The results drawn from this work suggest that the combined use of prioritised planning and RRT* could be appropriate for use in the guidance, navigation and control systems of planetary rovers.