Exploration in Extreme Environments with Swarm Robotic System

Abstract

Missions in extreme environments such as exploration and mapping of chemical leakage, radiation and high temperature are hazardous for human workers. Therefore, robotic solutions can be utilised in these applications. Swarm robotics is an alternative approach to traditional robotics, with potential to increase the efficiency of robotic solutions in an extreme environment. Swarm robotic systems are low-cost, robust and scalable. In this paper, we focused on an exploration scenario for use in an extreme environment application. The scenario for this study was to explore the different levels of radioactive or chemical leakage from drums in a nuclear storage facility. The environment and mobile robot used for this work, Mona, were modelled in the V-REP simulation software. The effects of experimental parameters, i.e. the number of robots and complexity of the storage facility, on the efficiency of the exploration system were evaluated. The results revealed that, an increase in population size increased the performance of the exploration significantly. Moreover, the complexity of the environment did not have significant impact on the performance of the system.