Cooperative multiagent robotic systems

摘要

Introduction Teams of robotic systems at first glance might appear to be more trouble than they are worth. Why not simply build one robot that is capable of doing everything we need? There are several reasons why two robots (or more) can be better than one: ffl Distributed Action: Many robots can be in many places at the same time ffl Inherent Parallelism: Many robots can do many, perhaps different things at the same time ffl Divide and Conquer: Certain problems are well suited for decomposition and allocation among many robots ffl Simpler is better: Often each agent in a team of robots can be simpler than a more comprehensive single robot solution No doubt there are more reasons as well. Unfortunately there are also drawbacks, in particular regarding coordination and elimination of interference. The degree of difficulty imposed depends heavily upon the task and the communication and control strategies chosen.