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Warning: this page is currently under construction!

 

Overview

COCoA is a framework to facilitate multirobot coordination. COCoA is specifically designed for teamwork in time critical domains requiring tightly coupled coordination. Robots respond to uncertainty in the environment by interleaving planning and execution. COCoA enables the robots to generate a team plan by modeling the problem as a MILP which can be solved using an anytime algorithm that combines standard MILP solution techniques with domain specific heuristics.

The declarative nature of the MILP framework makes it easy for COCoA to accomodate a wide range of additional system constraints on the robots, goals, and resources of the system. For example, COCoA can handle constraints such as: unless a room is checked for chemicals before looking for victims in that room, robot 1 cannot participate in the search since it cannot be decontaminated.

Benchmarks

Please contact (mberna AT andrew DOT cmu DOT edu) if you would like access to the current set of benchmarks or if you have your own benchmarks to donate to the repository.

Code

COCoA and an abstract simulator, COCoASim have been implemented in Java. I have not yet made any official releases of the source code but if you are interested, please email me (mberna AT andrew DOT cmu DOT edu).

CPLEX is currently required in order for COCoA to be fully functional. I will investigate open source ILP solvers in the near future.

Relevant Publications

• M. Koes, K. Sycara, and I. Nourbakhsh. "A Constraint Optimization Framework for Fractured Robot Teams", in Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), Hakodate, Japan, May 2006. (pdf) (Bibtex)
• M. Koes, I. Nourbakhsh, and K. Sycara. "Constraint Optimization Coordination Architecture for Search and Rescue Robotics", in Proceedings of ICRA 2006, Orlando, FL, May 2006, pp. 3977-3982. (pdf) (Bibtex)
• M. Koes, K. Sycara, and I. Nourbakhsh. "The Best Laid Plans of Robots and Men," in Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Distributed Plan and Schedule Management, Stanford, CA, AAAI Press, March, 2006, pp. 49-56. (pdf) (Bibtex)
• M. Koes, I. Nourbakhsh, and K. Sycara. "Heterogeneous Multirobot Coordination with Spatial and Temporal Constraints," in Proceedings of the Twentieth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), AAAI Press, June, 2005, pp. 1292-1297. (pdf) (Bibtex)

Acknowledgments

This work was made possible through the generosity of the ILOG corporation and the NSF Award IIS-0205526.