Path planning for a multiple robot system

Abstract

This paper presents three heuristic algorithms that specify paths for a team of randomly placed robots to search a predefined area. The approaches are: a random movement with limited pre-path planning, a territorial claim with complete pre-path planning, and an expiring territorial claim with limited pre-path planning. The algorithms were simulated using Matlab and evaluated on the following criteria: total distance traversed by all robots, time of completion, uniformity of distribution of distance traveled among robots, and improvement from a single robot.