A Frame-Based Knowledge Model for Heterogeneous Multi-Robot System

Abstract

In order to build a kind of heterogeneous multi-robot system which can perform complex activities according to human requests, by means of a software platform, this paper proposes a frame-based knowledge model for heterogeneous multi-robot system. With this model, many heterogeneous robots are integrated into a single unit. The features of robots as well as other related users are described by the proposed set of frames/slots of the model. Particularly, with frame hierarchies organized by the ISA relations of frames, typical activities of this kind of heterogeneous multi-robot system, such as human-robot interaction, various behaviors of different robots according to human requests, etc., can be defined clearly. Based on this knowledge model, the defined heterogeneous multi-robot system can be implemented by a software platform. This knowledge model is adaptable for any kinds of robots and its independence to various kinds of techniques adopted by robots provides much convenience for a software platform to integrate and flexibly utilize these techniques for building a heterogeneous multi-robot system. In this paper, an actual heterogeneous multi-robot system is modeled by the proposed method. Its activities can demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed knowledge model.