Efficient Cooperation of Heterogeneous Robotic Agents: A Decentralized Framework

Abstract

In social and industrial facilities of the future such as hospitals, hotels, and warehouses, teams of robots will be deployed to assist humans in accomplishing everyday tasks like object handling, transportation, or pickup and delivery operations. In such a context, different robots (e.g., mobile platforms, static manipulators, or mobile manipulators) with different actuation, manipulation, and perception capabilities must be coordinated to achieve various complex tasks (e.g., cooperative parts assembly in the automotive industry or loading and unloading of palettes in warehouses) that require collaborative actions with each other and with human operators (Figure 1). © 1994-2011 IEEE.