Multi-robot cooperation through incremental plan-merging

This paper presents an approach we have recently developed for multi-robot cooperation. It is based on a paradigm where robots incrementally merge their plans into a set of already coordinated plans. This is done through exchange of information about their current state and their future actions. This leads to a generic framework which can be applied to a variety of tasks and applications. The paradigm, called plan-merging paradigm, is presented and illustrated through its application to planning, execution and control of a large fleet of a autonomous mobile robots for load transport tasks in a structured environment.