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Given an initial and a desired configuration of the system, we devise a hierarchical cell decomposition methodology which is able to determine which regions of the configuration space need to be further subdivided at each iteration, thus avoiding redundant cell expansions. Furthermore, given a sequence of free configuration space cells with an arbitrary connectedness and shape, we employ harmonic transformations and harmonic potential fields to accomplish safe transitions between adjacent cells, thus ensuring almost-global convergence to the desired configuration. Finally, we present the comparative simulation results that demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed control scheme and its superiority in terms of complexity while yielding a satisfactory performance without incorporating optimization in the selection of the paths.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s23010221","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,12,27]],"date-time":"2022-12-27T03:03:31Z","timestamp":1672110211000},"page":"221","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":7,"title":["Navigation of Multiple Disk-Shaped Robots with Independent Goals within Obstacle-Cluttered Environments"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"23","author":[{"given":"Panagiotis","family":"Vlantis","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Patras, University Campus, 26504 Rion, Greece"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9850-2540","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Charalampos P.","family":"Bechlioulis","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Patras, University Campus, 26504 Rion, Greece"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1229-3029","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Kostas J.","family":"Kyriakopoulos","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,12,25]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"46","DOI":"10.1177\/027836498300200304","article-title":"On the Piano Movers\u2019 Problem: Iii. 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