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：多机器人协作物体运输在控制与机器人领域已得到深入研究，但现有方法大多仅适用于全向移动机器人，或缺乏实时运行的整体导航与决策框架。本文提出一种自主非完整多机器人系统及端到端分层自主框架，用于协作式行李手推车运输。该框架可生成运动学可行路径，计算在线运动规划，并提供反馈使多机器人系统能够处理长列行李手推车，在避让障碍物与行人的同时应对多重固有且耦合的复杂约束。我们通过实际运输任务验证了所设计的协作手推车运输系统，实验结果表明该系统在复杂动态环境中具有有效性与可靠性。