Decentralized Multi-Floor Exploration by a Swarm of Miniature Robots Teaming with Wall-Climbing Units

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the problem of collectively exploring unknown and dynamic environments with a decentralized heterogeneous multi-robot system consisting of multiple units of two variants of a miniature robot. The first variant-a wheeled ground unit-is at the core of a swarm of floor-mapping robots exhibiting scalability, robustness and flexibility. These properties are systematically tested and quantitatively evaluated in unstructured and dynamic environments, in the absence of any supporting infrastructure. The results of repeated sets of experiments show a consistent performance for all three features, as well as the possibility to inject units into the system while it is operating. Several units of the second variant-a wheg-based wall-climbing unit-are used to support the swarm of mapping robots when simultaneously exploring multiple floors by expanding the distributed communication channel necessary for the coordinated behavior among platforms. Although the occupancy-grid maps obtained can be large, they are fully distributed. Not a single robotic unit possesses the overall map, which is not required by our cooperative pathplanning strategy.

Tracking Multiple Fast Targets With Swarms: Interplay Between Social Interaction and Agent Memory

“…To validate the obtained simulation results, we performed series of experiments using 6 in-house developed differential-drive land robots with a maximum speed of 10 cm/s. Although this swarm robotic system was originally developed for the mapping of unknown environments (see Kit et al (2019) for technical details), it has also been used in the tracking of non-evasive targets (Kwa et al, 2020a).…”

“…This includes system flexibility-the ability to operate in dynamic environments, robustness-the ability to cope with individual agent failures, and scalability-the ability to carry out tasks in systems comprised of different number of agents. As such, swarming MRS have been demonstrated to be able to carry out several tasks such as dynamic area monitoring (Zoss et al, 2018), area mapping (Kit et al, 2019), and target monitoring (Coquet et al, 2019).…”

“…(C) Robots with agent-based memory moving towards target after being found. (D) ORION robotic unit(Kit et al, 2019).…”

Design innovation of mesoscale robotic swarms: applications to cooperative urban sensing and mapping

“…For the robot's vision, it has been found that common ranging modules are usually bulky (Sundram et al, 2018). Hence, we develop a custombuilt light detection and ranging (LiDAR) module to reconstruct the point cloud of the environment for the miniature robots, thus enabling the real-time construction of an occupancy grid map (Kit et al, 2019). As the ranging module requires clear line-ofsight, it is impractical to develop it on Virgo.…”

“…Add-on sensor Reconfiguration wheel To achieve adaptability and heterogeneity for the miniature robots, the architecture of the Orion platform is classified into two parts: (1) the chassis, which is the main uniform element that would house the electronics and technologies developed by other platforms; (2) the wheels, which are reconfigurable depending on the requirements. There are two species of Orion developed for the specific application of indoor urban sensing and mapping: ground-mapping Orion (O-map) and wall-climbing Orion (O-climb) (Kit et al, 2019).…”