A supervisory control strategy for robot-assisted search and rescue in hostile environments

Abstract

This work proposes a reactive supervisory control for a team of heterogeneous robots capable of autonomous navigation and cooperation in unstructured and hostile environment. The supervisor is built using classical theories of discrete event systems (DES), but it differs for its reactive capabilities. This allows to have an online evaluation and optimization for dynamic events and environments. The supervisor (high level control) interacts directly with low level control, taking into account dynamic and kinematic of the agents. The specific robotic platform includes both aerial (UAV) and ground robots but the results and applications are absolutely general.