Cooperative object transportation using multiple robots has been intensively studied in the control and robotics literature, but most approaches are either only applicable to omnidirectional robots or lack a complete navigation and decision-making framework that operates in real time. This paper presents an autonomous nonholonomic multi-robot system and an end-to-end hierarchical autonomy framework for collaborative luggage trolley transportation. This framework finds kinematic-feasible paths, computes online motion plans, and provides feedback that enables the multi-robot system to handle long lines of luggage trolleys and navigate obstacles and pedestrians while dealing with multiple inherently complex and coupled constraints. We demonstrate the designed collaborative trolley transportation system through practical transportation tasks, and the experiment results reveal their effectiveness and reliability in complex and dynamic environments.

翻译：多机器人协同物体运输在控制与机器人学文献中已被深入研究，但大多数方法要么仅适用于全向机器人，要么缺乏实时运行的完整导航与决策框架。本文提出一种自主非完整多机器人系统及其端到端层次化自主框架，用于协作行李手推车运输。该框架能够生成运动学可行路径、计算在线运动规划，并提供反馈机制，使多机器人系统在处理长列行李手推车的同时，能够绕行障碍物与行人，并应对多个固有复杂且耦合的约束条件。我们通过实际运输任务展示了所设计的协作手推车运输系统，实验结果表明其在复杂动态环境中具有有效性和可靠性。