Selection of Rendezvous Points for Multi−Robot Exploration in Dynamic Environments

Conference item

For many robotics applications (such as robotic search and rescue), information about the environment must be gathered by a team of robots and returned to a single, specific location. Coordination of robots and sharing of information is vital, and when environments have severe communication limitations, approaches must be robust to communication drop-out and failure. The difficulties are compounded in dynamic environments, where paths previously believed to be free can suddenly become blocked. In this paper, we introduce a novel way of calculating rendezvous points for robots to meet and share information. Using role-based exploration, some robots continuously explore the environment while others ferry information back and forth to a central command centre. Optimal rendezvous point selection leads to more efficient exploration, and allows robots to replan when one of them has unexpected obstacles in its path.

Authors: de Hoog, J; Cameron, S; Visser, A

• Host title: Workshop on Agents in Realtime and Dynamic Environments‚ International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi−Agent Systems (AAMAS)
• Publication date: 2010-05-01