Multi-robot cooperation in the MARTHA project

The Martha project objectives are the control and the management of a eet of au tonomous mobile robots for transshipment tasks in harbours airports and marshaling yards Our presentation focuses on one of the most challenging and key problems of the Martha project the multi robot cooperation Indeed high level missions are produced by a Central Station and sent to robots It is then up to the robots to re ne their missions to plan their actions and trajectories in the environment and to coordinate these actions and trajectories with the other robots In particular these coordinations occur in crossings in lanes when unexpected obstacles require the robot to move in the opposite lane and in open areas where robots need to synchronise their trajectories We present a general concept for the control of a large eet of autonomous mobile robots which has been developed implemented and validated in the framework of Martha Numerous researches have been conducted in the autonomous mobile robot eld never theless the Martha project is the rst one to add the multi robot cooperation capabilities to such a large eet of robots The Martha robots demonstrate advanced autonomous features including non holonomic motion planning environment modelling sensor based obstacle avoidance and decentralised cooperation schemes at mission and trajectory levels