Next generation multi-robot architecture

Keywords: multi-robot system, control architecture, SLAM

This research project is devoted to study, develop, and experimentally test control architectures for future multi-robot systems. Current architectures are more or less application-specific solutions that are hardly generic in any sense. In the near future, the number of real world multi-robot systems will increase rapidly and thus there is a clear need for a basic framework for control architecture design. Both theoretical and experimental methods will be used to demonstrate that the developed structures and algorithms are indeed generic by their nature.

The basic tasks for the majority of the present multi-robot systems include mapping and exploration of the mission environment. In this project, the mapping task will be based on the development of suitable distributed SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) algorithms. The early development of the algorithms will be performed in a simulator specially programmed for the project but later on the preliminary results will be applied into two separatereal world multi-robot systems. These systems, one being an underwater system and the other an indoor system, will act as the final development and testing tools. The test systems will be used to verify the developed methods and algorithms for the future multi-robot systems operating in various configurations in dynamic and unknown environments

Publications

• Marek Matusiak, Pekka Appelqvist, Janne Paanajärvi, Tomi Ylikorpi and Aarne Halme,
  "Feasibility study of the form and structure of a ball-like mobile robot for indoor environments,"
  in Proc. IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics, Budapest, Hungary, July 3-5, 2006, 2006, 6 p.