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Distributed Coordination in Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Systems

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Abstract

Coordination in multi-robot systems is a very active research field in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, since through coordination one can achieve a more effective execution of the robots' tasks. In this paper we present an approach to distributed coordination of a multi-robot system that is based on dynamic role assignment. The approach relies on the broadcast communication of utility functions that define the capability for every robot to perform a task and on the execution of a coordination protocol for dynamic role assignment. The presented method is robust to communication failures and suitable for application in dynamic environments. In addition to experimental results showing the effectiveness of our approach, the method has been successfully implemented within the team of heterogeneous robots Azzurra Robot Team in a very dynamic hostile environment provided by the RoboCup robotic soccer competitions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Via Salaria 113, 00198, Roma, Italy

    Luca Iocchi & Daniele Nardi

  2. Dept. of Communication, Computer and System Sciences, Università di Genova, Via Opera Pia 13, 16125, Genova, Italy

    Maurizio Piaggio & Antonio Sgorbissa

Authors
  1. Luca Iocchi
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  2. Daniele Nardi
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  3. Maurizio Piaggio
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  4. Antonio Sgorbissa
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Iocchi, L., Nardi, D., Piaggio, M. et al. Distributed Coordination in Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Systems. Autonomous Robots 15, 155–168 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025589008533

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