Navigation interface for multiple autonomous mobile robots with grouping function

In this paper, we present a navigation interface for multiple autonomous mobile robots. With existing interfaces of autonomous mobile robots, one operator can not conveniently control multiple robots simultaneously. To overcome this problem, we introduce a concept of grouping in our proposed interface. We develop an interface that offers convenient interaction with multiple robots. In the proposed navigation interface, the system displays the environment map of the surroundings of the robots on the monitor and the operator can graphically input a target position or a desired trajectory for a set of multiple autonomous robots. Moreover, the system of the proposed navigation interface manages the information of the robots and the grouping in order to guarantee scalability of the system against increase of the number of robots. In experiments, we validate the effectiveness of the concept of grouping and the proposed navigation interface.