Asynchronous Task Plan Refinement for Multi-Robot Task and Motion Planning

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel hybrid constraint satisfaction approach for multi-robot task and motion planning that improves efficiency and solution quality by minimizing unnecessary constraints and leveraging heuristics.

Contribution

It introduces a new plan refinement algorithm formulated as a hybrid constraint satisfaction problem, enhancing solution efficiency and feasibility in multi-robot scenarios.

Findings

Outperforms synchronous approaches in planning efficiency.

Achieves shorter makespan in multi-robot task planning.

Maximizes feasible solution space with minimal constraints.

Abstract

This paper explores general multi-robot task and motion planning, where multiple robots in close proximity manipulate objects while satisfying constraints and a given goal. In particular, we formulate the plan refinement problem--which, given a task plan, finds valid assignments of variables corresponding to solution trajectories--as a hybrid constraint satisfaction problem. The proposed algorithm follows several design principles that yield the following features: (1) efficient solution finding due to sequential heuristics and implicit time and roadmap representations, and (2) maximized feasible solution space obtained by introducing minimally necessary coordination-induced constraints and not relying on prevalent simplifications that exist in the literature. The evaluation results demonstrate the planning efficiency of the proposed algorithm, outperforming the synchronous approach in terms of makespan.