Cooperative exploration of mobile robots using reaction-diffusion equation on a graph

Abstract

In this paper, we propose cooperative exploration method for mobile robots in a working area. The method will generate and share the minimal-cost path for each mobile robot. Each mobile robot goes through several observation points to accomplish the exploration. The observation points should be arranged at a fixed distance from at least on corresponding observation point. In addition, the number of observation points and the lengths of paths for each mobile robot are to be minimized. The proposed method should have the efficiency in computational cost concurrently with the adaptability to dynamic environmental changes.