DEC-LOS-RRT: Decentralized Path Planning for Multi-robot Systems with Line-of-sight Constrained Communication

TL;DR

This paper introduces DEC-LOS-RRT, a decentralized path planning algorithm for multi-robot systems that ensures safety under line-of-sight communication constraints, improving reliability in search-and-rescue scenarios.

Contribution

It presents a novel LOS-constrained decentralized planning method building on RRT that guarantees safety despite communication limitations.

Findings

The method guarantees safety at each planning iteration.

Simulation results demonstrate effectiveness under LOS constraints.

Performance degrades gracefully compared to clairvoyant algorithms.

Abstract

Decentralized planning for multi-agent systems, such as fleets of robots in a search-and-rescue operation, is often constrained by limitations on how agents can communicate with each other. One such limitation is the case when agents can communicate with each other only when they are in line-of-sight (LOS). Developing decentralized planning methods that guarantee safety is difficult in this case, as agents that are occluded from each other might not be able to communicate until it's too late to avoid a safety violation. In this paper, we develop a decentralized planning method that explicitly avoids situations where lack of visibility of other agents would lead to an unsafe situation. Building on top of an existing Rapidly-exploring Random Tree (RRT)-based approach, our method guarantees safety at each iteration. Simulation studies show the effectiveness of our method and compare the degradation in performance with respect to a clairvoyant decentralized planning algorithm where agents can communicate despite not being in LOS of each other.