Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Multi-robot Coverage Using Self-organized Networks for Central Coordination

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Swarm Intelligence (ANTS 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 12421))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

We propose an approach to multi-robot coverage that combines aspects of centralized and decentralized control, based on the existing ‘mergeable nervous systems’ concept. In our approach, robots self-organize a dynamic ad-hoc communication network for distributed asymmetric control, enabling a degree of central coordination. In the coverage task, simulated ground robots coordinate with UAVs to explore an arena as uniformly as possible. Compared to strictly centralized and decentralized approaches, we test our approach in terms of coverage percentage, coverage uniformity, scalability, and fault tolerance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Albani, D., Nardi, D., Trianni, V.: Field coverage and weed mapping by UAV swarms. In: 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 4319–4325. IEEE (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Allwright, M., Bhalla, N., Pinciroli, C., Dorigo, M.: ARGoS plug-ins for experiments in autonomous construction. Technical reports, TR/IRIDIA/2018-007, IRIDIA, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Allwright, M., Bhalla, N., Pinciroli, C., Dorigo, M.: Simulating multi-robot construction in ARGoS. In: Dorigo, M., Birattari, M., Blum, C., Christensen, A.L., Reina, A., Trianni, V. (eds.) ANTS 2018. LNCS, vol. 11172, pp. 188–200. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00533-7_15

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Almadhoun, R., Taha, T., Seneviratne, L., Zweiri, Y.: A survey on multi-robot coverage path planning for model reconstruction and mapping. SN Appl. Sci. 1(8), 1–24 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-019-0872-y

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Dewangan, R.K., Shukla, A., Godfrey, W.W.: Survey on prioritized multi robot path planning. In: IEEE International Conference on Smart Technologies and Management for Computing, Communication, Controls, Energy and Materials (ICSTM), pp. 423–428. IEEE (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Dieber, B., Micheloni, C., Rinner, B.: Resource-aware coverage and task assignment in visual sensor networks. IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol. 21(10), 1424–1437 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Galceran, E., Carreras, M.: A survey on coverage path planning for robotics. Robot. Auton. Syst. 61(12), 1258–1276 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Ge, S.S., Fua, C.H.: Complete multi-robot coverage of unknown environments with minimum repeated coverage. In: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 715–720. IEEE (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Hamann, H.: Swarm Robotics: A Formal Approach. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74528-2

    Book  Google Scholar 

  10. Ichikawa, S., Hara, F.: Characteristics of object-searching and object-fetching behaviors of multi-robot system using local communication. In: Proceedings of 1999 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, vol. 4, pp. 775–781. IEEE (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Juliá, M., Gil, A., Reinoso, O.: A comparison of path planning strategies for autonomous exploration and mapping of unknown environments. Auton. Robots 33(4), 427–444 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Koenig, S., Liu, Y.: Terrain coverage with ant robots: a simulation study. In: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Autonomous Agents, pp. 600–607. Association for Computing Machinery (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Laouici, Z., Mami, M.A., Khelfi, M.F.: Cooperative approach for an optimal area coverage and connectivity in multi-robot systems. In: 2015 International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), pp. 176–181. IEEE (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Luo, W., Sycara, K.: Adaptive sampling and online learning in multi-robot sensor coverage with mixture of gaussian processes. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 6359–6364. IEEE (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Mathews, N., Christensen, A.L., O’Grady, R., Mondada, F., Dorigo, M.: Mergeable nervous systems for robots. Nat. Commun. 8, 439 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Panerati, J., Gianoli, L., Pinciroli, C., Shabah, A., Nicolescu, G., Beltrame, G.: From swarms to stars: task coverage in robot swarms with connectivity constraints. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 7674–7681. IEEE (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Pinciroli, C., et al.: ARGoS: a modular, parallel, multi-engine simulator for multi-robot systems. Swarm Intell. 6(4), 271–295 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Rekleitis, I., Lee-Shue, V., New, A.P., Choset, H.: Limited communication, multi-robot team based coverage. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004, Proceedings. ICRA 2004, vol. 4, pp. 3462–3468. IEEE (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Santos, M., Egerstedt, M.: Coverage control for multi-robot teams with heterogeneous sensing capabilities using limited communications. In: 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 5313–5319. IEEE (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Sartoretti, G., et al.: PRIMAL: pathfinding via reinforcement and imitation multi-agent learning. IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. 4(3), 2378–2385 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Schroeder, A., Ramakrishnan, S., Manish, K., Trease, B.: Efficient spatial coverage by a robot swarm based on an ant foraging model and the lévy distribution. Swarm Intel. 11(1), 39–69 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Siligardi, L., et al.: Robust area coverage with connectivity maintenance. In: 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 2202–2208. IEEE (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Wang, X., Han, S., Wu, Y., Wang, X.: Coverage and energy consumption control in mobile heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. IEEE Trans. Autom. Control 58(4), 975–988 (2012)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  24. Zafar, M.N., Mohanta, J.C.: Methodology for path planning and optimization of mobile robots: a review. Procedia Comput. Sci. 133, 141–152 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Zhu, W., Allwright, M., Heinrich, M.K., Oğuz, S., Christensen, A.L., Dorigo, M.: Formation control of UAVs and mobile robots using self-organized communication topologies. In: Swarm Intelligence - Proceedings of ANTS 2020 - Twelfth International Conference. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Heidelberg (2020)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work is partially supported by the Program of Concerted Research Actions (ARC) of the Université libre de Bruxelles; by the Ontario Trillium Scholarship Program through the University of Ottawa and the Government of Ontario, Canada; by the Office of Naval Research Global (Award N62909-19-1-2024); by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 846009; and by the China Scholarship Council (grant number 201706270186). Mary Katherine Heinrich and Marco Dorigo acknowledge support from the Belgian F.R.S.-FNRS, of which they are a Postdoctoral Researcher and a Research Director respectively.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRIDIA, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Aryo Jamshidpey, Weixu Zhu, Mostafa Wahby, Michael Allwright, Mary Katherine Heinrich & Marco Dorigo

Authors
  1. Aryo Jamshidpey
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Weixu Zhu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Mostafa Wahby
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Michael Allwright
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Mary Katherine Heinrich
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Marco Dorigo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aryo Jamshidpey .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Marco Dorigo

  2. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Thomas Stützle

  3. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

    Maria J. Blesa

  4. Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Bellaterra, Spain

    Christian Blum

  5. University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany

    Heiko Hamann

  6. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Mary Katherine Heinrich

  7. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Volker Strobel

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Jamshidpey, A., Zhu, W., Wahby, M., Allwright, M., Heinrich, M.K., Dorigo, M. (2020). Multi-robot Coverage Using Self-organized Networks for Central Coordination. In: Dorigo, M., et al. Swarm Intelligence. ANTS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12421. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60376-2_17

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60376-2_17

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-60375-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-60376-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation