Integrating multirobot coordination in a mobile-robot control system

A system that coordinates the activity of several mobile robots is described. In the author´s (1989) previous work, he developed a control system for one mobile robot that executes high-level tasks or missions. This new capability called multirobot control level (MRC), is viewed as a new layer in the system that uses functionalities offered by the lower levels. This improvement shows the flexibility of the approach. In order to maintain this flexibility, the coordination must also be programmable therefore an extension of the previous formalism is also proposed. This coordination is validated by the use of labeled Petri nets. A first step towards error recovery at the coordination level is also addressed. Several experiments are also proposed that show the advantages of the approach