Design and Integration of a Distributed, Autonomous and Collaborative Multi-Robot System for Exploration in Unknown Environments

Abstract

Multi-robot systems are preferred compared to single robot systems in complex missions such as, unknown and unstructured area exploration, due to scalability, robustness, efficiency and cost considerations. However, there are multiple practical challenges that need to be addressed to realize such systems. In this paper, we demonstrate a generic, low power, compute efficient hardware platform to accomplish complex tasks using a team of robots. This platform is used to demonstrate exploration mission in unknown environment using a team of four robots. Further, overall analysis and results for the demo application are presented and practical challenges in deploying such multi-agent systems are discussed.