Sharing Information Efficiently in Cooperative Multi-Robot Systems

Abstract

Multi-robot systems (MRS) are sets of intelligent and autonomous mobile robots that are assumed to cooperate in order to carry out collective missions (Arai, Pagello, & Parker, 2002; Cao, Fukunaga, & Kahng, 1997; Rocha, Dias, & Carvalho, 2005). Due to the expendability of individual robots, MRS may substitute humans in risky scenarios (Maimone et al., 1998; Mataric & Sukhatme, 2001; Parker, 1998; Thrun et al. 2003). In other scenarios, they may relieve people from collective tasks that are intrinsically monotonous and repetitive. MRS are the solution to automate missions that are either inherently distributed in time, space, or functionality.