Hybrid symbolic control for robot motion planning

This paper addresses the symbolic motion planning and control of robots to meet high level specifications through hybrid supervisory control. The basic idea is to partition the motion space of robots into logically equivalent regions, based on which a bisimulation quotient transition system is derived and supervisor is synthesized. The bisimulation relation between the abstracted model and the original continuous dynamics is formally proved, which guarantees the existence of feasible continuous control signals and closed-loop trajectories for robots to satisfy the high level specifications as well. The main contribution of the paper lies in the development of a unified hybrid hierarchical control framework whose top layer is a discrete supervisor that is responsible for decision making to satisfy the assigned specification. This discrete supervisor is connected to the low level continuous dynamics of the system via an interface layer. The interface layer is responsible for translating discrete commands of the supervisor to a continuous control signals implementable by the continuous plant and vice versa.