Distributed cooperative multi-robot path planning using differential evolution

This paper provides an alternative approach to the co-operative multi-robot path planning problem using parallel differential evolution algorithms. Both centralized and distributed realizations for multi-robot path planning have been studied, and the performances of the methods have been compared with respect to a few pre-defined yardsticks. The distributed approach to this problem out-performs its centralized version for multi-robot planning. Relative performance of the distributed version of the differential evolution algorithm has been studied with varying numbers of robots and obstacles. The distributed version of the algorithm is also compared with a PSO-based realization, and the results are competitive.