Rendezvous through obstacles in multi-agent exploration

Abstract

In the robot rescue scenario a team of (ground-based, mobile) robots are sent into a disaster area in order to map it and to look for survivors. Communication between agents is assumed limited, which means that robots have to physically move in order to pass information to the outside world. Here we augment the previous communication model by assuming that short-range communication of map data is possible, and also consider adding a second low-bandwidth command channel with much larger range. This means that dense data (like maps) can be sent through some walls or along corridors, increasing the possible ways that robots can pass data along; and that high-priority short messages can be sent to most of the agents at any time. We claim that these modifications make the simulated scenario more realistic, with a corresponding increase in complexity. Results indicate that the ability to move information is improved over earlier work.