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Advances in Plan-Based Control of Robotic Agents pp 52–70Cite as

Collaborative Exploration of Unknown Environments with Teams of Mobile Robots

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2466))

Abstract

In this paper we consider the problem of exploring an unknown environment by a team of robots. As in single-robot exploration the goal is to minimize the overall exploration time. The key problem to be solved in the context of multiple robots is to choose appropriate target points for the individual robots so that they simultaneously explore different regions of the environment. We present an approach for the coordination of multiple robots which, in contrast to previous approaches, simultaneously takes into account the cost of reaching a target point and its utility. The utility of a target point is given by the size of the unexplored area that a robot can cover with its sensors upon reaching that location. Whenever a target point is assigned to a specific robot, the utility of the unexplored area visible from this target position is reduced for the other robots. This way, a team of multiple robots assigns different target points to the individual robots. The technique has been implemented and tested extensively in real-world experiments and simulation runs. The results given in this paper demonstrate that our coordination technique significantly reduces the exploration time compared to previous approaches.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Freiburg, 79110, Freiburg, Germany

    Wolfram Burgard

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Bonn, 53117, Bonn, Germany

    Mark Moors

  3. Research Establishment for Applied Science, 53343, Wachtberg, Germany

    Frank Schneider

Authors
  1. Wolfram Burgard
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  2. Mark Moors
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  3. Frank Schneider
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Informatik IX, Technische Universität München, Orleansstr. 34, 81667, München, Germany

    Michael Beetz

  2. Fraunhofer-Institut, Autonome Intelligente Systeme (AIS), Schloss Birlinghoven, 53754, Sankt Augustin, Germany

    Joachim Hertzberg

  3. LAAS-CNRS, 7, Avenue du Colonel Roche, 31077, Toulouse cedex, France

    Malik Ghallab

  4. College of Engineering Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48019, USA

    Martha E. Pollack

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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Burgard, W., Moors, M., Schneider, F. (2002). Collaborative Exploration of Unknown Environments with Teams of Mobile Robots. In: Beetz, M., Hertzberg, J., Ghallab, M., Pollack, M.E. (eds) Advances in Plan-Based Control of Robotic Agents. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2466. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-37724-7_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-37724-7_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-00168-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-37724-5

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