Communication-Constrained Multi-Robot Exploration with Intermittent Rendezvous

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: da Silva, Alysson Ribeiro, Chaimowicz, Luiz, Silva, Thales Costa, Hsieh, Ani
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author da Silva, Alysson Ribeiro
Chaimowicz, Luiz
Silva, Thales Costa
Hsieh, Ani
author_facet da Silva, Alysson Ribeiro
Chaimowicz, Luiz
Silva, Thales Costa
Hsieh, Ani
contents Communication constraints can significantly impact robots' ability to share information, coordinate their movements, and synchronize their actions, thus limiting coordination in Multi-Robot Exploration (MRE) applications. In this work, we address these challenges by modeling the MRE application as a DEC-POMDP and designing a joint policy that follows a rendezvous plan. This policy allows robots to explore unknown environments while intermittently sharing maps opportunistically or at rendezvous locations without being constrained by joint path optimizations. To generate the rendezvous plan, robots represent the MRE task as an instance of the Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) and minimize JSSP metrics. They aim to reduce waiting times and increase connectivity, which correlates to the DEC-POMDP rewards and time to complete the task. Our simulation results suggest that our method is more efficient than using relays or maintaining intermittent communication with a base station, being a suitable approach for Multi-Robot Exploration. We developed a proof-of-concept using the Robot Operating System (ROS) that is available at: https://github.com/multirobotplayground/ROS-Noetic-Multi-robot-Sandbox.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2309_13494
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Communication-Constrained Multi-Robot Exploration with Intermittent Rendezvous
da Silva, Alysson Ribeiro
Chaimowicz, Luiz
Silva, Thales Costa
Hsieh, Ani
Robotics
Multiagent Systems
Communication constraints can significantly impact robots' ability to share information, coordinate their movements, and synchronize their actions, thus limiting coordination in Multi-Robot Exploration (MRE) applications. In this work, we address these challenges by modeling the MRE application as a DEC-POMDP and designing a joint policy that follows a rendezvous plan. This policy allows robots to explore unknown environments while intermittently sharing maps opportunistically or at rendezvous locations without being constrained by joint path optimizations. To generate the rendezvous plan, robots represent the MRE task as an instance of the Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) and minimize JSSP metrics. They aim to reduce waiting times and increase connectivity, which correlates to the DEC-POMDP rewards and time to complete the task. Our simulation results suggest that our method is more efficient than using relays or maintaining intermittent communication with a base station, being a suitable approach for Multi-Robot Exploration. We developed a proof-of-concept using the Robot Operating System (ROS) that is available at: https://github.com/multirobotplayground/ROS-Noetic-Multi-robot-Sandbox.
title Communication-Constrained Multi-Robot Exploration with Intermittent Rendezvous
topic Robotics
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.13494