TY - GEN
T1 - Flocking-based distributed terrain coverage with dynamically-formed teams of mobile mini-robots
AU - Dasgupta, Prithviraj
AU - Cheng, Ke
AU - Fan, Li
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - We consider the problem of distributed terrain coverage within an unknown environment by teams of mobile, resource-constrained mini-robots. Previous research on this topic mainly focuses on multiple robots that cover the environment individually while sharing limited information about their actions using local hcuiistics. However, those methods do not Existing literature on flocking-based control of robot teams essentially provides mechanisms to move the robots as a single team in formation and to reconfigure the team when some of the team members have to temporarily move out of formation to avoid obstacles along the team's path [2], [8], [9]. However, address the issue of dynamically building robot teams and restructuring the team formations based on the operational constraints within the environment. In this paper, we combine a flocking-based mechanism for robot team formation with a utility-based mechanism that enables robots to change teams to dynamically to improve the coverage of the environment. We have tested our techniques empirically on accurate models of e-puck robots on the Webots simulator within different environments. Our experimental results show that our team-based coverage technique performs significantly better in terms of coverage, by about 25%, and slightly better in terms of redundancy in area covered, than comparable distributed terrain coverage strategies for resource-constrained mini-robots.
AB - We consider the problem of distributed terrain coverage within an unknown environment by teams of mobile, resource-constrained mini-robots. Previous research on this topic mainly focuses on multiple robots that cover the environment individually while sharing limited information about their actions using local hcuiistics. However, those methods do not Existing literature on flocking-based control of robot teams essentially provides mechanisms to move the robots as a single team in formation and to reconfigure the team when some of the team members have to temporarily move out of formation to avoid obstacles along the team's path [2], [8], [9]. However, address the issue of dynamically building robot teams and restructuring the team formations based on the operational constraints within the environment. In this paper, we combine a flocking-based mechanism for robot team formation with a utility-based mechanism that enables robots to change teams to dynamically to improve the coverage of the environment. We have tested our techniques empirically on accurate models of e-puck robots on the Webots simulator within different environments. Our experimental results show that our team-based coverage technique performs significantly better in terms of coverage, by about 25%, and slightly better in terms of redundancy in area covered, than comparable distributed terrain coverage strategies for resource-constrained mini-robots.
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U2 - 10.1109/SIS.2009.4937850
DO - 10.1109/SIS.2009.4937850
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:67650501847
SN - 9781424427628
T3 - 2009 IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium, SIS 2009 - Proceedings
SP - 96
EP - 103
BT - 2009 IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium, SIS 2009 - Proceedings
T2 - 2009 IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium, SIS 2009
Y2 - 30 March 2009 through 2 April 2009
ER -