Speed and Density Planning for a Speed-Constrained Robot Swarm Through a Virtual Tube

The planning and control of a robot swarm in a complex environment has attracted increasing attention. To this end, the concept of virtual tubes has been taken up in our previous work. Specifically, a variable-width virtual tube is designed to prevent collisions with obstacles in complex environments. Based on the planned virtual tube for a large number of speed-constrained robots, the average forward speed and density along the virtual tube are further planned in this letter to improve safety and efficiency. In contrast to existing methods, the proposed method leverages global information and is well-suited for navigating confined spaces with speed-constrained robot swarms. Numerical simulations and experiments are conducted to show that the safety and efficiency of the passing-through process are improved.