Effects of Multi-Robot Team Formations on Distributed Area Coverage

Abstract

This paper examines the problem of distributed coverage of an initially unknown environment using a multi-robot system. Specifically, focus is on a coverage technique for coordinating teams of multiple mobile robots that are deployed and maintained in a certain formation while covering the environment. The technique is analyzed theoretically and experimentally to verify its operation and performance within the Webots robot simulator, as well as on physical robots. Experimental results show that the described coverage technique with robot teams moving in formation can perform comparably with a technique where the robots move individually while covering the environment. The authors also quantify the effect of various parameters of the system, such as the size of the robot teams, the presence of localization, and wheel slip noise, as well as environment related features like the size of the environment and the presence of obstacles and walls on the performance of the area coverage operation.

Self-organized swarm robot for target search and trapping inspired by bacterial chemotaxis

“…Area coverage problem has been tackled for years using either one single robot [2] [3] or multi-robots/swarm robots [4] [5]. It is also indispensable in simultaneous localization and mapping.…”

Adaptive Leader-Follower Formation in Cluttered Environment Using Dynamic Target Reconfiguration

“…Exploration [16], management and platooning of autonomous vehicles [5], mapping of unknown locations [19], coverage of unknown area [9], transport of heavy objects [3], rendez-vous of multiple agents [21] are some examples of multi-robot tasks. Nonetheless, the coordination of multi-robot navigation is among the most challenging tasks, due notably, to its implication for instance for public transportation [15].…”