Nav-SCOPE: Swarm Robot Cooperative Perception and Coordinated Navigation (I)

Abstract

This paper proposes a lightweight decentralized solution for multi-robot coordinated navigation with cooperative perception. First, we introduce a rapid way to process sensory data, thus obtaining safe directions and key environmental features. Then, an information flow is created to facilitate real-time perception sharing over wireless ad-hoc networks. Consequently, the environmental uncertainties of each robot are reduced by interaction fields that deliver complementary information. Finally, path optimization is achieved in a probabilistic way, enabling self-organized coordination with effective convergence, divergence, and collision avoidance. Our method is fully interpretable and ready for deployment without gaps. Comprehensive simulations and real-world experiments demonstrate reduced path redundancy, robust performance across various tasks, and minimal demands on computation and communication.