Decentralized Coordination of Heterogeneous Ensembles Using Jadex

Wanninger

Hoffmann

et al. 2018

Sensors

Self Cite

Mobile multirobot systems play an increasing role in many disciplines. Their capabilities can be used, e.g., to transport workpieces in industrial applications or to support operational forces in search and rescue scenarios, among many others. Depending on the respective application, the hardware design and accompanying software of mobile robots are of various forms, especially for integrating different sensors and actuators. Concerning this design, robots of one system compared to each other can be classified to exclusively be either homogeneous or heterogeneous, both resulting in different system properties. While homogeneously configured systems are known to be robust against failures through redundancy but are highly specialized for specific use cases, heterogeneously designed systems can be used for a broad range of applications but suffer from their specialization, i.e., they can only hardly compensate for the failure of one specialist. Up to now, there has been no known approach aiming to unify the benefits of both these types of system. In this paper, we present our approach to filling this gap by introducing a reference architecture for mobile robots that defines the interplay of all necessary technologies for achieving this goal. We introduce the class of robot systems implementing this architecture as multipotent systems that bring together the benefits of both system classes, enabling homogeneously designed robots to become heterogeneous specialists at runtime. When many of these robots work together, we call the structure of this cooperation an ensemble. To achieve multipotent ensembles, we also integrate reconfigurable and self-descriptive hardware (i.e., sensors and actuators) in this architecture, which can be freely combined to change the capabilities of robots at runtime. Because typically a high degree of autonomy in such systems is a prerequisite for their practical usage, we also present the integration of necessary mechanisms and algorithms for achieving the systems’ multipotency. We already achieved the first results with robots implementing our approach of multipotent systems in real-world experiments as well as in a simulation environment, which we present in this paper.

Section: Proof Of Concept and Preliminary Resultsmentioning

confidence: 71%

Section: Proof Of Concept and Preliminary Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Multipotent Systems: Combining Planning, Self-Organization, and Reconfiguration in Modular Robot Ensembles

Wanninger

Hoffmann

et al. 2018

Sensors

Self Cite

Maple-Swarm: Programming Collective Behavior for Ensembles by Extending HTN-Planning

Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation: Engineering Principles

Huhn

Bohn

et al. 2020

Self Cite

Programming goal-oriented behavior in collective adaptive systems is complex, requires high effort, and is failure-prone. If the system's user wants to deploy it in a real-world environment, hurdles get even higher: Programs urgently require to be situation-aware. With our framework Maple, we previously presented an approach for easing the act of programming such systems on the level of particular robot capabilities. In this paper, we extend our approach for ensemble programming with the possibility to address virtual swarm capabilities encapsulating collective behavior to whole groups of agents. By using the respective concepts in an extended version of hierarchical task networks and by adapting our self-organization mechanisms for executing plans resulting thereof, we can achieve that all agents, any agent, any other set of agents, or a swarm of agents execute (swarm) capabilities. Moreover, we extend the possibilities of expressing situation awareness during planning by introducing planning variables that can get modified at design-time or run-time as needed. We illustrate the possibilities with examples each. Further, we provide a graphical front-end offering the possibility to generate mission-specific problem domain descriptions for ensembles including a light-weight simulation for validating plans.

Swarm and Collective Capabilities for Multipotent Robot Ensembles

Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation: Engineering Principles

Bohn

Eing

et al. 2020

Self Cite

Swarm behavior can be very beneficial for real-world robot applications. While analyzing the current state of research, we identified that many studied swarm algorithms foremost aim at modifying the movement vector of the executing robot. In this paper, we demonstrate how we encapsulate this behavior in a general pattern that robots can execute with adjusted parameters for realizing different beneficial swarm algorithms. We integrate the pattern as a virtual swarm capability in our reference architecture for multipotent, reconfigurable multi-robot ensembles and demonstrate its application in proof of concepts. We further illustrate how we can lift the concept of virtual capabilities to also integrate other known approaches for collective system programming as virtual collective capabilities. As an example, we do so by integrating the execution platform for the Protelis aggregate programming language.