Path planning protocol for collaborative multi-robot systems

Wireless ad hoc sensor networks are being developed to collect data across the area of deployment. These technologies enable multiple robots to form a temporary multi-robot team and cooperate with each other to launch a complex mission. A path planning algorithm and well-organized communication protocol are needed when the multi-robot systems have to search for or reach a designate target. It is more complex in designing a collaborative path planning algorithm and communication protocols for multi-robot systems since it has to consider avoiding intra-team collisions, energy efficiency, information sharing and cooperation problems, etc. Moreover, unlike single robot path planning problem, a multi-robot system is usually constructed by several simple, cheap, function-restricted, and energy-limited robots to plan a path toward the target by cooperative fashion. This is the main advantage of the puny multi-robot system. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a simple but efficient collaborative path planning algorithm (CPPA) and a communication protocol for the sensor multi-robot systems where the energy consumption is reduced as well as the duration of reaching the goal is shortened. Moreover, considering the survivability of the mission, the proposed algorithm can enable the sensor robots to complete the mission even if some robots are failed by accidents. Experiment results show that the energy consumption and computation of proposed algorithm is lower than the multiple independent robots or other methods.