Continuous Execution of High-Level Collaborative Tasks for Heterogeneous Robot Teams

TL;DR

This paper introduces a control synthesis framework for heterogeneous multi-robot systems to execute collaborative tasks continuously, using logic encoding and automatic synthesis to ensure correctness and synchronization.

Contribution

It presents a novel synthesis approach for continuous, correct-by-construction task execution in heterogeneous robot teams using LTL^ logic.

Findings

Successful implementation on a physical multi-robot system

Automatic generation of teaming assignments and behaviors

Ensured synchronization for collaborative tasks

Abstract

We propose a control synthesis framework for a heterogeneous multi-robot system to satisfy collaborative tasks, where actions may take varying duration of time to complete. We encode tasks using the discrete logic LTL^\psi, which uses the concept of bindings to interleave robot actions and express information about relationship between specific task requirements and robot assignments. We present a synthesis approach to automatically generate a teaming assignment and corresponding discrete behavior that is correct-by-construction for continuous execution, while also implementing synchronization policies to ensure collaborative portions of the task are satisfied. We demonstrate our approach on a physical multi-robot system.