Multi-Robot Planning and Control from CCTV Camera Networks in a Real Warehouse

2026-06-04

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge of collision-free coordination and planning for multiple mobile robots in large-scale warehouse environments without onboard perception or computation hardware. By leveraging a distributed network of CCTV cameras and edge computing, the system constructs a topological camera graph directly in uncalibrated image space. A hierarchical planner generates sequences of cameras and corresponding image-space trajectories for each robot, while a combined priority-based and joint coordination strategy efficiently manages shared resources in overlapping camera fields of view. This work presents the first real-world demonstration of multi-robot collaborative operation in a warehouse setting relying solely on an external vision system, eliminating the need for dedicated onboard navigation hardware. Experiments successfully coordinated four robots across a facility equipped with 30 cameras and six 27-meter aisles, validating the effectiveness of the proposed image-space topological modeling and resource-sharing mechanisms in terms of task completion time and coordination efficiency.

Abstract

Off-board control of mobile robots from cameras embedded in the environment offers a practical path to scalable autonomy, moving sensing and compute off the robots. We extend this idea from the single-robot case to coordinated fleets in a real warehouse, driving multiple robots with only a distributed CCTV network and edge compute. The system operates entirely in image space over an uncalibrated, pixel-wise topological camera graph, enabling wide-area operation with flexible camera placement. A hierarchical planner selects a camera sequence per robot and plans its image-space motion through each view, coordinating robots with a prioritised-then-joint strategy and treating overlapping camera regions as shared resources held by one robot at a time to prevent collisions and deadlocks. We validate the approach in a real warehouse with four robots and 30 cameras across six 27 m aisles, reporting mission times and coordination statistics. To our knowledge, this is the first field demonstration of multi-robot planning and coordination using only an external camera network and off-board compute, with robots carrying no task-specific navigation hardware.

Problem

• Multi-Robot Planning
• CCTV Camera Networks
• Off-board Control
• Warehouse Automation
• Image-space Coordination

Innovation

• multi-robot coordination
• off-board control
• image-space planning
• uncalibrated camera network
• edge computing