Task Cooperation and Behavior Coordination of Multi-Robot Environment Exploration Based on Artificial Potential Field

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach to multi-robot exploration of unstructured environment in which both multi-robot task cooperation and behavior coordination strategies are implemented. The task cooperation is achieved by assigning exploring goals to robots dynamically in a cooperative way, and the behavior coordination of robots are carried out with modified artificial potential field to assure a balanced distribution along the frontier areas as soon as possible. In this way, unnecessary detours are avoided so as to make the exploration process more efficient. A series of simulation results demonstrate that the task cooperation and behavior coordination among multiple robots are well implemented to distribute various robots over the unknown complex environment properly and accomplish the exploration mission effectively.