Abstract
We present a sampling-based framework for multi-robot motion planning which combines an implicit representation of a roadmap with a novel approach for pathfinding in geometrically embedded graphs tailored for our setting. Our pathfinding algorithm, discrete-RRT (dRRT), is an adaptation of the celebrated RRT algorithm for the discrete case of a graph, and it enables a rapid exploration of the high-dimensional configuration space by carefully walking through an implicit representation of a tensor product of roadmaps for the individual robots. We demonstrate our approach experimentally on scenarios of up to 60 degrees of freedom where our algorithm is faster by a factor of at least ten when compared to existing algorithms that we are aware of.
This work has been supported in part by the 7th Framework Programme for Research of the European Commission, under FET-Open grant number 255827 (CGL—Computational Geometry Learning), by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1102/11), by the German-Israeli Foundation (grant no. 1150-82.6/2011), and by the Hermann Minkowski–Minerva Center for Geometry at Tel Aviv University. K. Solovey and O. Salzman contributed equally to this paper.
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Notes
- 1.
We mention that we are not the first to consider RRTs in discrete domains. Branicky et al. [9] applied the RRT algorithm to a discrete graph. However, a key difference between the approaches is that we assume that the graph is geometrically embedded, hence we use random points as samples while they use nodes of the graph as samples. Additionally, their technique requires that all the neighbors of a visited vertex will be considered—a costly operation in our setting, as mentioned above.
- 2.
There is wide consensus on the term tensor product as defined here, and less so on the term Cartesian product. As the latter has already been used before in the context of motion planning, we will keep using it here as well.
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Acknowledgments
We wish to thank Glenn Wagner for advising on the M* algorithm and Ariel Felner for advice regarding pathfinding algorithms on graphs. We note that the title “Finding a Needle in an Exponential Haystack” has been previously used in a talk by Joel Spencer in a different context.
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Solovey, K., Salzman, O., Halperin, D. (2015). Finding a Needle in an Exponential Haystack: Discrete RRT for Exploration of Implicit Roadmaps in Multi-robot Motion Planning. In: Akin, H., Amato, N., Isler, V., van der Stappen, A. (eds) Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics XI. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 107. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16595-0_34
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