Cooperative control for groups of autonomous mobile minirobots

Abstract

The paper describes a control configuration for coordination of a group of mobile minirobots designed as remote operated vehicles. The main characteristics of a minirobot are presented focusing on the adopted solution for the communication system, especially on the partition of coordination tasks between local and remote operators. Another section discusses the algorithms designed for accomplish a specific patrol mission, which ensures robot localization, terrain mapping, area partition, complete area coverage, robot motion planning and collisions avoidance. The final section outline current middleware concept and how these can be used to achieve the objectives presented above.