Title :
Using a PRM planner to compare centralized and decoupled planning for multi-robot systems
Author :
Sanchez, Gustavo ; Latombe, Jean-Claude
Author_Institution :
Comput. Sci. Dept., ITESM, Cuernavaca, Mexico
Abstract :
Describes experiments with a probabilistic roadmap planner (PRM) on a spot-welding station with 2 to 6 robot manipulators combining 12 to 36 degrees of freedom. When performing centralized planning, the planner has proven to be reliable and fast. When performing decoupled planning, it was not significantly faster, but it was much less reliable, failing to find a solution 30 to 75% of the times in 6-robot examples. This is an important result as it invalidates the assumption that the loss of completeness in performing decoupled planning is not very substantial in practice and indicates that centralized planning is a more desirable approach-at least in applications like spot-welding, which requires rather tight robot coordination.
Keywords :
industrial manipulators; multi-robot systems; path planning; welding; centralized planning; decoupled planning; multi-robot systems; probabilistic roadmap planner; robot manipulators; spot-welding station; tight robot coordination; Bidirectional control; Clamps; Computer science; Manipulators; Motion planning; Multirobot systems; Orbital robotics; Path planning; Robot kinematics; Welding;
Conference_Titel :
Robotics and Automation, 2002. Proceedings. ICRA '02. IEEE International Conference on
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-7272-7
DOI :
10.1109/ROBOT.2002.1014852