Incremental scheduling of discrete event systems

Abstract

A common problem in the field of robotics is how to coordinate the motion of multiple robots. As this problem is PSPACE-complete it is generally solved by incomplete algorithms which are computationally tractable but cannot guarantee that a solution will be found even if a solution exists. In this work we use the coordination method of prioritized planning in a (Discrete Event Systems) DES context. We develop and implement an algorithm for using prioritized planning in DES. The algorithm is showned to be an improvement over the standard prioritized planning approach in terms of being capable of finding a valid solution to the multi-robot motion-planning problem in a greater percentage of instances.