Security-Preserving Multi-Robot Path Planning for Boolean Specification Tasks Using Labeled Petri Nets

This letter investigates the path planning of multi-robot systems for high-level tasks described by Boolean specifications and security constraints. We assume that the behavior of each robot can be identified and partially monitored by a passive intruder. The problem aims to plan an optimal path for each robot such that the tasks expressed in conjunction, disjunction, and negation for trajectories and final states are coordinately completed. The security constraints require that the intruder should never infer the final locations of a set of robots called secret robots. In order to solve this problem, labeled Petri nets are adopted to model the mobile capability of the multi-robot systems. Then an integer linear programming problem is proposed to find an optimal solution (if it exists) such that the Boolean specification is fulfilled, while the securities of secret robots are preserved. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated through several simulation studies.