Limited communication, multi-robot team based coverage

Improving Agent Team Performance through Helper Agents

“…Jonker et al [12] sought to measure the level of "sharedness" of a mental model and found that when agents communicate world and intention information, agent teams perform tasks faster. Rekleitis [17] investigated multi-agent teams with limited, line-of-sight communication, but focused on coverage of an entire area with agents. Other work considers intermittent communication or real-world problems, but uses controllers, requires networks, forms subteams, or requires close proximity [23,9].…”

On redundancy, efficiency, and robustness in coverage for multiple robots

“…A similar check is done for the opposite direction (lines 9-12). However, if the solution calls for moving bi-directionally, than the algorithm first checks which direction involves less movement, CCW (lines [13][14][15][16][17] or CW (18)(19)(20)(21)(22). In either case, the direction involving less movement is taken first, since it will be backtracked-over in the counter direction.…”

“…In [18] and [13], they report on a multi-robot version of a coverage method known as the Boustrophedon. The algorithm utilizes communications, even under the restriction that communication between two robots is available only when they are within line of sight of each other, a restriction not addressed in our work.…”

A Novel Strategy for Exploration With Multiple Robots

“…Reference (Choset, 2001) gives a short overview of existing techniques for multi-robot coverage problems. Different approaches to the coverage problem are found in (Cortés et al, 2004), (Kurabayashi et al, 1996), (Wong and MacDonald, 2004), (Zheng et al, 2005) (Rekleitis et al, 2004) and (Kong et al, 2006). The problem statement of the present paper does not differ that much from the common exploration/mapping task and the complete coverage problem, but is rather a combination of both.…”

“…Since the robots no longer have to cover all free space physically, the novel algorithm will yield a time gain compared to complete coverage strategies. The developed algorithm is inspired by complete coverage strategies as (Rekleitis et al, 2004), (Kong et al, 2006). In these strategies it is assumed that the space to be explored does not have a maze-like structure with many narrow corridors, but is an open space containing only convex obstacles sparsely spread throughout.…”