Crada Ornl 98-0528 Distributing Planning and Control for Teams of Cooperating Mobile Robots

This CRADA project involved the cooperative research of investigators in ORNL’s Center for Engineering Science Advanced Research (CESAR) with researchers at Caterpillar, Inc. The subject of the research was the development of cooperative control strategies for autonomous vehicles performing applications of interest to Caterpillar customers. The project involved three Phases of research, conducted over the time period of November 1998 through December 2001. This project led to the successful development of several technologies and demonstrations in realistic simulation that illustrated the effectiveness of our control approaches for distributed planning and cooperation in multi-robot teams. Statement of Objectives The primary objectives of this research project were to: (1) Develop autonomous control technologies to enable multiple vehicles to work together cooperatively, (2) Provide the foundational capabilities for a human operator to exercise oversight and guidance during the multi-vehicle task execution, and (3) Integrate these capabilities to the ALLIANCE-based autonomous control approach for multi-robot teams. These objectives have been successfully met with the results implemented and demonstrated in a near real-time multi-vehicle simulation of up to four vehicles performing mission-relevant tasks. Benefits to the Funding DOE Office’s Mission This collaborative research project was of benefit to DOE’s basic science objective by significantly advancing the state of the art in cooperative systems. The research resulted in robust cooperative multi-robot teams that are easy to task and control by human controllers. The general cooperative robotic technologies developed under this CRADA are directly applicable to the DOE mission objective of advancing fundamental science. These developed technologies are of a general nature, which also makes them applicable to a wide range of practical applications