Summary. To explore the effects of different simple communications strategies on performance of robot teams, we have conducted a set of foraging experiments using real robots (the Minnesota Distributed Autonomous Robotic Team). Our experimental results show that more complex communication strategies do not necessarily improve task completion times, but tend to reduce variance in performance.

A cutom per-siun of rhe The reasons for all this research activity are threefold. First of all, time is of the essence in search and rescue. The likelihood of survival drops off very rapidly after the fust 48

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We study the problem of dispersing a group of small robots in an unknown environment. The objective is to cover the environment as much as possible while staying within communications range. We assume there is no central control, the environment is unknown and with complex obstacles, the robots operate without any central control, and have only limited communications with other robots and limited sensing capabilities. We present algorithms and validate them experimentally in the Player/Stage simulation environment.