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Cooperative exploration based on supervisory control of multi-robot systems

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Abstract

When multiple mobile robots cooperatively explore an unknown environment, the advantages of robustness and redundancy are guaranteed. However, available traditional economy approaches for coordination of multi-robot systems (MRS) exploration lack efficient target selection strategy under a few of situations and rely on a perfect communication. In order to overcome the shortages and endow each robot autonomy, a novel coordinated algorithm based on supervisory control of discrete event systems and a variation of the market approach is proposed in this paper. Two kinds of utility and the corresponding calculation schemes which take into account of cooperation between robots and covering the environment in a minimal time, are defined. Different moving target of each robot is determined by maximizing the corresponding utility at the lower level of the proposed hierarchical coordinated architecture. Selection of a moving target assignment strategy, dealing with communication failure, and collision avoidance are modeled as behaviors of each robot at the upper level. The proposed approach distinctly speeds up exploration process and reduces the communication requirement. The validity of our algorithm is verified by computer simulations.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the Natural Science Fund of Heilongjiang Province, China under Grant F201331. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of the reviewers, which have improved the presentation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre of Networks and Information, Qiqihar University, Heilongjiang, 161006, China

    Xuefeng Dai

  2. The School of Computer and Control Engineering, Qiqihar University, Heilongjiang, 161006, China

    Laihao Jiang

  3. The School of Communication and Electronic Engineering, Qiqihar University, Heilongjiang, 161006, China

    Yan Zhao

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  1. Xuefeng Dai
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  2. Laihao Jiang
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  3. Yan Zhao
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Correspondence to Xuefeng Dai.

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Dai, X., Jiang, L. & Zhao, Y. Cooperative exploration based on supervisory control of multi-robot systems. Appl Intell 45, 18–29 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-015-0741-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-015-0741-3

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