Dynamic priority allocation for conflict free coordinated manipulation of multiple agents

This article presents a decoupled approach for conflict free coordinated manipulation of multiple industrial robot agents operating in a typical industrial environment. Decoupled method proposed in this work plans the path for the robots in two steps. In the first step, for each participating robot agent a path collision free with respect to stationary obstacle is obtained. The coordination among agents is achieved in the second step of the approach by use of off-line strategy for conflict resolution. The key objective of the conflict resolution is dynamic assignment of priorities for path modification of the robot agents. Thus, the agents involved in a local conflict situation coordinate their movement by adopting the lowest movement cost motion paths. Results obtained from realistic simulation of multi-robot agent environment with three industrial robots demonstrate that the proposed approach assures the rapid, concurrent and conflict free coordinated motion of the robot agents. © 2009 IEEE.