MRBTP: Efficient Multi-Robot Behavior Tree Planning and Collaboration

AAAI 2025 (Oral)
College of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology
{caiyishuai, chenxinglin, caizhongxuan, maoyunxin, liminglong10, wenjing.yang, wj}@nudt.edu.cn
MY ALT TEXT

The framework of our paper. (1) MRBTP. A sound and complete algorithm for the multi-robot BT planning problem, capable of coordinating diverse actions across different BTs through cross-tree expansion. (2) Intention Sharing. Robots share intentions with each other during execution, enabling multi-BT parallelization without compromising failure tolerance. (3) Optional Plugin: Subtree Pre-planning. This plugin utilizes LLMs to pre-plan task-specific subtrees, establishing long-horizon action sequences to enhance MRBTP's planning and execution efficiency.

Abstract

Multi-robot task planning and collaboration are critical challenges in robotics. While Behavior Trees (BTs) have been established as a popular control architecture and are plannable for a single robot, the development of effective multi-robot BT planning algorithms remains challenging due to the complexity of coordinating diverse action spaces. We propose the Multi-Robot Behavior Tree Planning (MRBTP) algorithm, with theoretical guarantees of both soundness and completeness. MRBTP features cross-tree expansion to coordinate heterogeneous actions across different BTs to achieve the team's goal. For homogeneous actions, we retain backup structures among BTs to ensure robustness and prevent redundant execution through intention sharing. While MRBTP is capable of generating BTs for both homogeneous and heterogeneous robot teams, its efficiency can be further improved. We then propose an optional plugin for MRBTP when Large Language Models (LLMs) are available to reason goal-related actions for each robot. These relevant actions can be pre-planned to form long-horizon subtrees, significantly enhancing the planning speed and collaboration efficiency of MRBTP. We evaluate our algorithm in warehouse management and everyday service scenarios. Results demonstrate MRBTP's robustness and execution efficiency under varying settings, as well as the ability of the pre-trained LLM to generate effective task-specific subtrees for MRBTP.

Slides

BibTeX


          @inproceedings{cai2025mrbtp,
            title={Mrbtp: Efficient multi-robot behavior tree planning and collaboration},
            author={Cai, Yishuai and Chen, Xinglin and Cai, Zhongxuan and Mao, Yunxin and Li, Minglong and Yang, Wenjing and Wang, Ji},
            booktitle={Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
            volume={39},
            number={14},
            pages={14548--14557},
            year={2025}
          }