Distributed supervisory control for multiple robot autonomous navigation performing single-robot tasks

This paper proposes two new approaches based on the Supervisory Control Theory (SCT) of Discrete Event Systems (DES) for autonomous navigation of multiple robots with single-robot tasks being assigned by a centralized scheduler. The two planning strategies differ regarding their implementation, which can be centralized or distributed. Nevertheless, both approaches share the central objective of considering the scheduler and robots as DES, allowing the use of SCT to model and control the behavior of the whole multi-robotic system. Particularly, SCT is used to gather deliberative and reactive motion planning algorithms through a structured procedure, aiming to safely navigate in cluttered, dynamic, partially-known environments. The open-loop behavior of the autonomous navigation system is modeled for both approaches. Moreover, standard supervisors are obtained for the centralized planning approach. In addition, the supervisor localization method is considered to allow a distributed planning approach. Furthermore, as a case study, real experiments considering mobile robots are carried out to corroborate the proposed framework.