Scalable and practical pursuit-evasion with networked robots

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the design and implementation of practical pursuit-evasion games with networked robots, where a communication network provides sensing-at-a-distance as well as a communication backbone that enables tighter coordination between pursuers. We first develop, using the theory of zero-sum games, an algorithm that computes the minimal completion time strategy for pursuit-evasion when pursuers and evaders have same speed, and when all players make optimal decisions based on complete knowledge. Then, we extend this algorithm to when evader Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (are significantly faster than pursuers. Unfortunately, these algorithms do not scale beyond a small number of robots. To overcome this problem, we design and implement a partition algorithm where pursuers capture evaders by decomposing the game into multiple multi-pursuer single-evader games. We show that the partition algorithm terminates, has bounded capture time, is robust, and is scalable in the number of robots. We then describe the design of a real-world mobile robot-based pursuit evasion game. We validate our algorithms by experiments in a moderate-scale testbed in a challenging office environment. Overall, our work illustrates an innovative interplay between robotics and communication.

Evaluating the impact of the number of access points in mobile robots localization using artificial neural networks

“…This is an interesting solution, but it requires a lot of resources which could make the system expensive. Examples of work involving the use of WSNs to obtain localization can be found in [13,23,26].…”

Search and pursuit-evasion in mobile robotics

“…Team formation and path generation are guided by a heuristic, which makes the algorithms sensitive to choice of heuristic. Vieira et al (2009) presented experiments with a team of iRobot Create platforms executing adversarial target search using a graph partition method. The robots utilize beacons in the indoor environment to localize themselves, and they execute a team strategy to capture a target moving faster than the searchers.…”

“…There are some settings in which this assumption is plausible. For example, Vieira et al (2009) developed a system where a network of stationary sensors provide information about the location of the evader to the pursuers. In such settings, the basic cops-and-robbers formulation is applicable.…”

The Role of Visibility in Pursuit/Evasion Games

“…Both the visible and invisible CR variants are natural models for discretized robotic PE problems; the connection has been noted and exploited relatively recently [2,8,11]. If it is further assumed that the robber is not actively trying to avoid capture (the case of drunk robber) we obtain a one-player graph game; this model has been used quite often in mobile robotics [12][13][14][15][16] and especially (when assuming random robber movement) in publications such as [17][18][19][20][21], which utilize partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP, [22][23][24]).…”