A nonlinear programming approach to collision-avoidance trajectory planning of multiple robots

We formulated the multi-robot trajectory problem into a series of NLP problem, each of which is that of finding the optimal tip positions of the robots for the next time step. The NLP problem is composed of an objective function and three constraints, namely: a) Joint position limits, b) Joint velocity limits, and c) Collision-avoidance constraints. By solving a series of NLP problem, optimally coordinated trajectories can be determined without requiring any prior path information. This is a novel departure from the previous approach in which either all paths or at least one path is assumed to be given. Practical application of the developed method is for optimal synthesis of multiple robot trajectories in off-line. To test the validity and effectiveness of the method, numerical examples are illustrated.