1st International ICST Conference on Robot Communication and Coordination

Research Article

A Decentralized Strategy for Cooperative Robot Exploration

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/ICST.ROBOCOMM2007.2202,
        author={Antonio Franchi and Luigi Freda and Giuseppe Oriolo and Marilena Vendittelli},
        title={A Decentralized Strategy for Cooperative Robot Exploration},
        proceedings={1st International ICST Conference on Robot Communication and Coordination},
        proceedings_a={ROBOCOMM},
        year={2010},
        month={5},
        keywords={},
        doi={10.4108/ICST.ROBOCOMM2007.2202}
    }
    
  • Antonio Franchi
    Luigi Freda
    Giuseppe Oriolo
    Marilena Vendittelli
    Year: 2010
    A Decentralized Strategy for Cooperative Robot Exploration
    ROBOCOMM
    ICST
    DOI: 10.4108/ICST.ROBOCOMM2007.2202
Antonio Franchi1,*, Luigi Freda,*, Giuseppe Oriolo1,*, Marilena Vendittelli1,*
  • 1: Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica Universit`a di Roma “La Sapienza” Via Ariosto 25, 00185 Roma, Italy
*Contact email: franchi@dis.uniroma1.it, freda@dis.uniroma1.it, oriolo@dis.uniroma1.it, vendittelli@dis.uniroma1.it

Abstract

We present a decentralized cooperative exploration strategy for mobile robots. A roadmap of the explored area, with the associate safe region, is built in the form of a compact data structure, called Sensor-based Random Graph. This is incrementally expanded by the robots by using a randomized local planner which automatically realizes a trade-off between information gain and navigation cost. Connecting structures, called bridges, are incrementally added to the graph to create shortcuts and improve the connectivity of the roadmap. Decentralized cooperation and coordination mechanisms are used so as to guarantee exploration efficiency and avoid conflicts. Simulations are presented to show the performance of the proposed technique.