The purpose of this work is to move a step toward
the automation of industrial plants through full exploitation of
autonomous robots. A planning algorithm is proposed to move
different objects in desired configurations with heterogeneous
robots such as manipulators, mobile robots and conveyor belts.
The proposed approach allows different objects to be handled
by different robots simultaneously in an efficient way and avoid-
ing collisions with the environment and self–collisions between
robots. In particular, the integrated system will be capable
of planning paths for a set of objects from various starting
points in the environment (e.g. shelves) to their respective final
destinations. The proposed approach unifies the active (e.g.,
grasping by a hand) and passive (e.g., holding by a table)
steps involved in moving the objects in the environment by
treating them as end–effectors with constraints and capabilities.
Time varying graphs will be introduced to model the problem
for simultaneous handling of objects by different end–effectors.
Optimal exploration of such graphs will be used to determine
paths for each object with time constraints. Results will be
validated through simulations.
IECON 2016 - under press
