Indoor navigation of multiple mobile robots in a dynamic environment using iGPS

Abstract

A delivery service system employing multiple mobile robots, which enables many users to use the delivery service simultaneously, needs the capability to reliably direct robots to their destinations in an office-like environment. In the preliminary stages of our work, we achieved deadlock-free navigation of such a multi-robot system in a static environment, where obstacles did not move. The next stage, which is presented in this paper, progressed to the robust navigation of a multirobot system in a dynamic environment, where obstacles, such as chairs or people, are moving. To do this, we used two methods. The first method recognizes obstacles by a mark-based vision technique and updates the environmental map with iGPS. The second method is a conventional one that detects unknown obstacles by an onboard laser range finder. To test our navigation methods, we conducted actual multi-robot experiments in an office-like environment.