Control of Multiple Autonomous Robots

A major challenge in the successful deployment of multiple mobile robots is coordination. How do we program these systems to carry out coordinated missions, while offering options for dealing with local conflicts or individual exceptions? How will these machines generate and adapt coordinated plans on the fly, while distributing the decision making in an effective manner? How will these systems best deal with the uncertainty of communication as well as uncertainty of the environment? We want to investigate optimal solutions to the coordination problem as stated above and test them experimentally. The focus of this project is on coordinating multiple mobile robots for tasks that involve a clear, but possibly changing set of mission goals. The goal is to develop a generalized framework that allows the deployment of multiple mobile robots for a selected application domain. Specifically, we want to work towards techniques for analyzing, designing, and implementing coordinated control mechanisms for multiple mobile robots. We also aim at demonstrating the feasibility of the developed framework by implementing it on a multiple mobile robot laboratory testbed. Problem Statement The overall problem concerns the development of a framework for the modeling, analysis, and design for the motion coordination and control of multiple mobile robots that has to perform some specific coordinated task in a shared environment.