Atlas: Exploration and Mapping with a Sparse Swarm of Networked IoT Robots

Abstract

Exploration and mapping is a fundamental capability of a swarm of robots: robots enter an unknown area, explore it, and collectively build a map of it. This capability is important regardless of whether the robots are crawling, flying, or swimming. Existing exploration and mapping algorithms tend to either be inefficient, or rely on having a dense swarm of robots. This paper introduces Atlas, an exploration and mapping algorithm for sparse swarms of robots, which completes a full exploration even in the extreme case of a single robot. We develop an open-source simulator and show that Atlas outperforms the state-of-the-art in terms of exploration speed and completeness of the resulting map.

(POSTER) Impact of Connectivity Degradation on Networked Robotic Swarm Cooperation

“…4) Exploration and Mapping. The exploration algorithm used is a packet-loss tolerant version of the Atlas algorithm from our previous work [3]. We refer to this version as "Atlas 2.0".…”

“…In our previous work, we introduced Atlas: a centralized synchronous exploration algorithm specifically designed for sparse swarms [3]. It uses frontier-based systematic exploration; robots are controlled by a central orchestrator which maintains a partial map throughout the exploration and sends robots to explore the yet unexplored zones within the area.…”

“…In our previous work [3], we introduce our open-source simulator that we developed specifically for comparing exploration and mapping algorithms. We build upon our previous work and improve the simulator for the purpose of investigating the effect of packet loss on event-based communication models.…”

Coordinating a Swarm of Micro-Robots Under Lossy Communication

“…Our previously published Atlas [1] is an algorithm which runs at the orchestrator and coordinates the action of individual robots in the swarm as they carry out a mapping expedition. Atlas minimizes the time to fully map an unexplored area, and the number of microrobots necessary to complete the mapping.…”

“…Section 5 details the modifications made to the Atlas algorithm. Section 6.1 describes the implementation of Atlas in a simulator, taking the work by Abu-Aisheh et al [1] as a starting point. Section 6.2 showcases the impact of packet loss on the performance of Atlas.…”