Exploration-path generation of multiple mobile robots using reaction-diffusion equation on a graph

Abstract

In this paper we present a method for cooperative exploration by multiple mobile robots in a restricted working area. By generating and sharing the minimal-length path for each mobile robot in which mobile robots go through several observation points to explore the working area. The observation points should be arranged at a fixed distance from at least one corresponding observation point. Therefore, mobile robots can obtain the complete information of the working area by only moving along all of the observation points. To reduce the redundancy of exploration task, the number of observation points and the length of observation paths for each mobile robot are to be minimized. To ensure the advantages from using multiple mobile robots, exploration path must be equally assigned to each mobile robot. Simulations had proved the efficiency of cooperating mobile robots using our proposed method. The feasible of our method is real world with actual mobile robots was demonstrated in cooperative exploration experiment.