Management of a multi-robot system in a public environment

Abstract

Mobile robotics is entering in a new phase. After using mobile robots in research laboratories, and factories it is now possible to consider the development of service mobile robots in public environments. Environments which are considerably more challenging due to their unpredictability and dynamic characteristics. The authors present in this paper the development of a prototype transport system dealing with heavy loads in hospitals. The system must perform tasks in or regular and timely fashion and be sufficiently predictable to be of use to the hospital staff. To solve such problem the authors propose a combination of planning and simulation for mission validation and central supervision for execution monitoring.