Distributed Multi-AUV Coordination in Naval Mine Countermeasure Missions

摘要

In this paper, we evaluate performance of our coordination framework, for Naval Mine Countermeasure (MCM) missions on the ALWSE-MC simulator. Our coordination framework integrates a distributed task allocation scheme, coor-dination mechanisms and precaution routines for multi robot team execution. Its performance has already been demonstrated in multi-robot TSP and object con-struction domains. Marine applications provide additional challenges such as noisy communication, position uncertainty and the likelihood of robot failures. There is a high probability that the initial assignments and considerations are sub-ject to change during run time in these kinds of environments. Our framework provides an auction based task allocation mechanism and uses its precaution rou-tines to ensure robust execution and effective completion of missions against sev-eral different types of failures. Preliminary results for MCM missions are promis-ing in the sense of mission completion, and AUV paths are close to optimal in the presence of uncertainties. In this work, we evaluate qualitative performance of our framework for handling different contingencies that may arise run time.