Task assignment and trajectory optimization for displaying stick figure animations with multiple mobile robots

This paper presents an offline, centralized motion planning algorithm for displaying stick figure animations by a group of mobile robots equipped with a light source. The algorithm plans collision-free trajectories for the robots such that the figure appears visually consistent across frames including overlaps between body parts. We use 3D motion capture data as input to obtain clean stick figure images. The algorithm consists of three steps: segment generation, robot assignment, and trajectory optimization. In the segment generation step, the input 3D animation is converted to a set of segments of visible robot trajectories in the 2D image plane. The robot assignment step then assigns a robot to each segment using dynamic programming. Finally, the trajectory optimization step computes the complete collision-free trajectory for every robot, including when a robot is not assigned to any segment. We demonstrate the algorithm in simulation using up to 75 robots.