Helper library for multi-robot task allocation

This package offers a few services to help managing a multi-robot system (in 2D).

All planning / control are done through the nav stack. It could be anything, as long as it is possible to plan without moving, and plan / control a robot with feedback.

Convention

• Robots have names and are assumed to be spawned in the corresponding namespace
• They use {name}/base_link and {name}/odom as main links
• They run either move_base in their namespace, or a light-weight controller with the same interface (default).

Exposed services

The main node is mrs_monitor and exposes three services, that are all defined in the package:

• estimate(start, goal, vmax, wmax): time-estimation of the trajectory between two 2D poses
• status(name): get the status of a robot. It is either -1. if the robot is waiting, of the estimated time to arrival if it is doing something
• move(name, goal, vmax, wmax): request a robot to move

Demo node

The demo.cpp code shows how to have several robots planning and moving around. It also shows a helper library (mrs_monitor_io) to hide the low-level service calls.