A Framework for Collaboration and Coordination in Multi-Robot Systems

Programming the behavior of multi-robot systems is a challenging task which has a key role in developing effective systems in many application domains. In this paper, we present Petri Net Plans (PNPs), a language based on Petri Nets (PNs), which allows for intuitive and effective robot and multi-robot behavior design. PNPs are very expressive and support a rich set of features that are critical to develop robotic applications, including sensing, interrupts and concurrency. As a central feature, PNPs allow for a formal analysis of plans based on standard PN tools. Moreover, PNPs are suitable for modeling Multi-Robot Systems and the developed behaviors can be executed in a distributed setting, while preserving the properties of the modeled system. PNPs have been deployed in several robotic platforms in different application domains. In this paper, we report three case studies, which address complex single robot plans, coordination and collaboration.