Real-Time Hierarchical Map Segmentation for Coordinating Multirobot Exploration

Abstract

Coordinating a team of autonomous agents to explore an environment can be done by partitioning the map of the environment into segments and allocating the segments as targets for the individual agents to visit. However, given an unknown environment, map segmentation must be conducted in a continuous and incremental manner. In this paper, we propose a novel real-time hierarchical map segmentation method for supporting multi-agent exploration of indoor environments, wherein clusters of regions of segments are formed hierarchically from randomly sampled points in the environment. Each cluster is then assigned with a cost-utility value based on the minimum cost possible for the agents to visit. In this way, map segmentation and target allocation can be performed continually in real-time to efficiently explore the environment. To evaluate our proposed model, we conduct extensive experiments on map segmentation and multi-agent exploration. The results show that the proposed method can produce more accurate and meaningful segments leading to a higher level of efficiency in exploring the environment. Furthermore, the robustness tests by adding noises to the environments were conducted to simulate the performance of our model in the realworld environment. The results demonstrate the robustness of our model in map segmentation and multiagent environment exploration. INDEX TERMSAutonomous agents, Intelligent agents, Multi-agent systems, agent-based modeling, image segmentation

Temporal Covariance‐Involved Distributionally Robust Optimization for Photovoltaic–Hydrogen Integrated Energy System Scheduling Considering Source, Load Sides, and Market Uncertainties

“…The proposed method could effectively improve the economy of HIES and reduce the cost of hydrogen production. [6] Li. et al proposed a two-level game stochastic optimization (SO) scheduling strategy for hydrogen-coupled regional IES clusters, considering the nonlinear relationship between hydrogen production and input power.…”

“…2) According to different grades, recycling waste heat from fuel cells is more feasible. [6,13,43] Remark 2. The reason for not considering the uncertainty of hydrogen price in this article is that the HM mechanism has not been completely formed in many countries or regions (e.g., China, India, etc.…”