Exploration Strategies of Coordinated Multi-Robot System: A Comparative Study

Author(s):  
Ayman. El shenawy ◽  
Khalil. Mohamed ◽  
Hany. M. Harb

Environment Exploration is the basic process that most of Multi Robot Systems applications depend on it. The exploration process performance depends on the coordination strategy between the robots participating in the team.  In this paper the coordination of Multi Robot Systems in the exploration process is surveyed, and the performance of different Multi Robot Systems exploration strategies is contrasted and analyzed for different environments and different team sizes.

Robotica ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celso De La Cruz ◽  
Ricardo Carelli

SUMMARYThis work presents, first, a complete dynamic model of a unicycle-like mobile robot that takes part in a multi-robot formation. A linear parameterization of this model is performed in order to identify the model parameters. Then, the robot model is input-output feedback linearized. On a second stage, for the multi-robot system, a model is obtained by arranging into a single equation all the feedback linearized robot models. This multi-robot model is expressed in terms of formation states by applying a coordinate transformation. The inverse dynamics technique is then applied to design a formation control. The controller can be applied both to positioning and to tracking desired robot formations. The formation control can be centralized or decentralized and scalable to any number of robots. A strategy for rigid formation obstacle avoidance is also proposed. Experimental results validate the control system design.


Author(s):  
Xuefeng Dai ◽  
Jiazhi Wang ◽  
Dahui Li ◽  
Yanchun Wang

Multi-robot systems have many potential applications; however, the available results for coordination were based on qualitative information. Fuzzy logic reasoning has a feature of human being thinking, so a novel coordinated algorithm is proposed. The algorithm utilizes sharing sensing information of rooms and semantic robots to coordinating robots in a structured environment exploration. The approach divides all teammate robots into two classes according to robot exploration performance, and divides rooms into large, medium and small ones according to estimations of the individual areas. On the purpose of minimizing exploration time of the system, the reasoning coordination assigns large room to good performance robot, and vice versa. A parameter update law is introduced for fuzzy membership functions. Finally, the results are validated by computer simulations for a structured environment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1448
Author(s):  
Wenju Mao ◽  
Zhijie Liu ◽  
Heng Liu ◽  
Fuzeng Yang ◽  
Meirong Wang

Multi-robots have shown good application prospects in agricultural production. Studying the synergistic technologies of agricultural multi-robots can not only improve the efficiency of the overall robot system and meet the needs of precision farming but also solve the problems of decreasing effective labor supply and increasing labor costs in agriculture. Therefore, starting from the point of view of an agricultural multiple robot system architectures, this paper reviews the representative research results of five synergistic technologies of agricultural multi-robots in recent years, namely, environment perception, task allocation, path planning, formation control, and communication, and summarizes the technological progress and development characteristics of these five technologies. Finally, because of these development characteristics, it is shown that the trends and research focus for agricultural multi-robots are to optimize the existing technologies and apply them to a variety of agricultural multi-robots, such as building a hybrid architecture of multi-robot systems, SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping), cooperation learning of robots, hybrid path planning and formation reconstruction. While synergistic technologies of agricultural multi-robots are extremely challenging in production, in combination with previous research results for real agricultural multi-robots and social development demand, we conclude that it is realistic to expect automated multi-robot systems in the future.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ching-Wei Chuang ◽  
Harry H. Cheng

Abstract In the modern world, building an autonomous multi-robot system is essential to coordinate and control robots to help humans because using several low-cost robots becomes more robust and efficient than using one expensive, powerful robot to execute tasks to achieve the overall goal of a mission. One research area, multi-robot task allocation (MRTA), becomes substantial in a multi-robot system. Assigning suitable tasks to suitable robots is crucial in coordination, which may directly influence the result of a mission. In the past few decades, although numerous researchers have addressed various algorithms or approaches to solve MRTA problems in different multi-robot systems, it is still difficult to overcome certain challenges, such as dynamic environments, changeable task information, miscellaneous robot abilities, the dynamic condition of a robot, or uncertainties from sensors or actuators. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to handle MRTA problems with Bayesian Networks (BNs) under these challenging circumstances. Our experiments exhibit that the proposed approach may effectively solve real problems in a search-and-rescue mission in centralized, decentralized, and distributed multi-robot systems with real, low-cost robots in dynamic environments. In the future, we will demonstrate that our approach is trainable and can be utilized in a large-scale, complicated environment. Researchers might be able to apply our approach to other applications to explore its extensibility.


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (9) ◽  
pp. 1284-1300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khalil Mohamed ◽  
Ayman El Shenawy ◽  
Hany Harb

Abstract Exploring the environment using multi-robot systems is a fundamental process that most automated applications depend on. This paper presents a hybrid decentralized task assignment approach based on Partially Observable Semi-Markov Decision Processes called HDec-POSMDPs, which are general models for multi-robot coordination and exploration problems in which robots can make their own decisions according to its local data with limited communication between the robot team. In this paper, a variety of multi-robot exploration algorithms and their comparison have been tackled. These algorithms, which have been taken into consideration, are dependent on different parameters. Collectively, there are five metrics maximize the total exploration percentage, minimize overall mission time, reduce the number of hops in the networked robots, reduce the energy consumed by each robot and minimize the number of turns in the path from the start pose cells to the target cells. Therefore, a team of identical mobile robots is used to perform coordination and exploration process in an unknown cell-based environment. The performance of the task depends on the strategy of coordination among the robots involved in the team. Therefore, the proposed approach is implemented, tested and evaluated in MRESim computer simulator, and its performance is compared with different coordinated exploration strategies for different environments and different team sizes. The experimental results demonstrate a good performance of the proposed approach compared to the four existing approaches.


Author(s):  
Yasushi Kambayashi ◽  
Yasuhiro Tsujimura ◽  
Hidemi Yamachi ◽  
Munehiro Takimoto

This chapter presents a framework using novel methods for controlling mobile multiple robots directed by mobile agents on a communication networks. Instead of physical movement of multiple robots, mobile software agents migrate from one robot to another so that the robots more efficiently complete their task. In some applications, it is desirable that multiple robots draw themselves together automatically. In order to avoid excessive energy consumption, we employ mobile software agents to locate robots scattered in a field, and cause them to autonomously determine their moving behaviors by using a clustering algorithm based on the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) method. ACO is the swarm-intelligence-based method that exploits artificial stigmergy for the solution of combinatorial optimization problems. Preliminary experiments have provided a favorable result. Even though there is much room to improve the collaboration of multiple agents and ACO, the current results suggest a promising direction for the design of control mechanisms for multi-robot systems. In this chapter, we focus on the implementation of the controlling mechanism of the multi-robot system using mobile agents.


2013 ◽  
Vol 401-403 ◽  
pp. 1738-1741
Author(s):  
Sheng Gao ◽  
Yang Zhang ◽  
Dong Dong Chen

This paper describes an object-oriented model of simulation for multi-operator multi-robot system. A universal hierarchies and inheritances framework and messages passing patterns are proposed, which supply a unified modeling interface with reusability and extensibility. Developers can concentrate on the other related issues of application rather than programming issues.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Butters ◽  
Emil T. Jonasson ◽  
Vijay M. Pawar

Supervising and controlling remote robot systems currently requires many specialised operators to have knowledge of the internal state of the system in addition to the environment. For applications such as remote maintenance of future nuclear fusion reactors, the number of robots (and hence supervisors) required to maintain or decommission a facility is too large to be financially feasible. To address this issue, this work explores the idea of intelligently filtering information so that a single user can supervise multiple robots safely. We gathered feedback from participants using five methods for teleoperating a semi-autonomous multi-robot system via Virtual Reality (VR). We present a novel 3D interaction method to filter the displayed information to allow the user to read information from the environment without being overwhelmed. The novelty of the interface design is the link between Semantic and Spatial filtering and the hierarchical information contained within the multi robot system. We conducted a user study including a cohort of expert robot teleoperators comparing these methods; highlighting the significant effects of 3D interface design on the performance and perceived workload of a user teleoperating many robot agents in complex environments. The results from this experiment and subjective user feedback will inform future investigations that build upon this initial work.


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