Collision-Free Intersection Crossing of Mobile Robots Using Decentralized Navigation Functions on Predefined Paths

This paper deals with the coordination of a group of mobile robots at an intersection. It focusses on decentralized navigation functions (DNFs) to achieve efficient traffic control. The main challenge is to define virtual potentials, which are used by decentralized navigation functions, such that traffic is both fluent and safe, while taking into account real-world limitations like acceleration, braking and speed limits. Our method consists in defining the navigation function with respect to the desired acceleration profile and is accompanied by a set of visibility conditions that increase the capacity of the intersection in terms of vehicle throughput. Priority conditions have been used to both avoid blockades of robots and to save energy by assigning higher priorities to robots with higher inertias.