MinPos : A Novel Frontier Allocation Algorithm for Multi-robot Exploration

Abstract

Abstract. Exploring an unknown environment with multiple robots requires an efficient coordination method to minimize the total duration. A standard method to discover new areas is to assign frontiers (boundaries between unexplored and explored accessible areas) to robots. In this context, the frontier allocation method is paramount. This paper introduces a decentralized and computationally efficient frontier allocation method favoring a well balanced spatial distribution of robots in the environment. For this purpose, each robot evaluates its relative rank among the other robots in term of travel distance to each frontier. Accordingly, robots are allocated to the frontier for which it has the lowest rank. To evaluate this criteria, a wavefront propagation is computed from each frontier giving an interesting alternative to path planning from robot to frontiers. Comparisons with existing approaches in computerized simulation and on real robots demonstrated the validity and efficiency of our algorithm.

Minimum Position Based on Robot’s Energy Consumption: A New Algorithm for Coordinated Multi-Robot Exploration

“…μ 2 v mg P mc (8) Referring to the equation 4 we obtain the power consumption of the motor at each step of the robot's motion . ρ (10) By integrating the power consumption of the motor along the path for reaching the frontier position between a time 0 t when the robot starts to move toward a frontier and the time f t when the robot reaches it or becomes close enough to it, we obtain:…”

“…where X Δ is the path length from the frontier to the robot determined by the wavefront propagation algorithm (WPA) [11] previously detailed in [10].…”

“…with N : number of robots and M number of frontiers) [10] allows its use in the case of robots with limited computational capabilities.…”

“…Their work has been extended to deal with the problem of limited communication [8] and the problem of obstruction where a path of one robot is blocked by another one [9]. Recently, Bautin et al [10], proposed a new algorithm so-called MinPos (for Minimum Positions) based on the frontier concept. This approach takes into account the position or rank of the robot towards its target, which is defined as the number of robots closer to the frontier than the considered one.…”

SyWaP: Synchronized wavefront propagation for multi-robot assignment of spatially-situated tasks

“…The MinPos algorithm is an alternative to assignment based on distance and information gain [16]. It uses the concept of rank of a robot towards a frontier equal to the number of other robot closer to that frontier.…”