Handling Communication Failure in Multi Robot Area Exploration

Outline
Introduction Motivation Literature Review Problem Definition Importance Of Problem Methodology

Conclusion
References

INTRODUCTION
Robotics
is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, manufacture and application of robots. Why Multi robotics? Some tasks require a team. Have potential to finish tasks faster. Increase robustness. Compensate sensor uncertainty by merging overlapping information. Multiple robots allow for more varied and creative solutions. Able to deal with imperfect communication.

Introduction(Contd)
Communication is the transfer of information from one robot to another. Types of Communications: Explicit Communication. Implicit Communication. State Communication. Goal Communication. Finding a collision-free path amidst obstacles for a robot from its starting position to its destination is called as path planning.

Introduction(Contd)
Efficient coverage of an unknown environment is called as area exploration.

Motivation
The known approaches to multi robot exploration are typically based on an extensive exchange of data like the poses of the robots, individual maps and targets for the motion planning. Typical application domains like surveillance or rescue missions require an instantaneous delivery of the exploration data to the users of the multi robot system.

Literature Review
Brian Yamauchi(1998),Mobile Robot Exploration and MapBuilding with Continuous Localization[1].Occupancy grid is used to represent the environment. Possible values in each grid cell are:

Occupied : cell is occupied by obstacle. Free : no obstacle exists in the cell. Unknown :occupancy of the cell is not known yet.

Brian Yamauchi (1998), Frontier Based Exploration using Multiple Robots[2]:-

The robots attempts to navigate to the nearest accessible, unvisited frontier. It is a greedy strategy with no co-ordination among robots.

The different frontier based algorithms differ in benefits, cost function, and in how the robot frontier assignment takes place.

Literature Review(contd)
Yuta Nakazono(2010),Exploration Algorithms by Multiple Robots in Challenged Communication Environment[10].Map exploration based on a store-carry-forward scheme can be used for information sharing.

Literature Review(contd)
Martijn N. Rooker(2007),Multi robot exploration under the constraints of wireless networking[7].Communicative exploration
explores an unknown environment with a group of robots that maintain communication with each other throughout the whole exploration process. Rashmi Ranjan Sahoo(2011), Navigational Path Planning of Multi-Robot using Honey Bee Mating Optimization Algorithm[12].HBMO algorithm is used for path planning.

Select shortest path length. Avoids hitting any obstacle in the map. Outperforms PSO based planning. Works only for local path planning of individual robots.

Problem Definition
Design of effective information sharing exploration algorithm by multiple robots based on effective utilization of previously known information for communication challenged environment. Parameters of optimizations are:

The overlapping of the searched area by robots tends to be small. The total time of exploration should be minimum so that the mission is accomplished quickly.

Importance Of Problem
The biggest challenge in multi robotics is maintaining communication even in case of failure and very less work had been done in this field. Communication of even a small amount among robots provides a lot of information for effective exploration.

Methodology
Robots having sensor information Local map building by robots Communicate to build shared map Area exploration Path Planning Information of new area is updated by communication in shared map

Conclusion
There is a research gap in area exploration under the assumptions that there exist a limited connectivity range and communication loss has been ignored. New research can be carried out in this gap to effectively continue the task of exploration.

References
1. Brian Yamauchi ,Alan Schultz and William Adams Mobile Robot Exploration and MapBuilding with Continuous Localization In Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation,pp. 3715-3720, 1998. 2. B. Yamauchi. Frontier-based exploration using multiple robots, pp. 47-53 , New York, NY, USA, 1998. ACM.. In Proceedings of the second international conference on Autonomous agents, AGENTS '98 3. K.H. Sedighi , K. Ashenayi, T.W. Manikas, R.L. Wainwright and H. Tai, Autonomous Local Path Planning for a Mobile Robot Using a Genetic Algorithm, in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 1338 - 1345 Vol.2, June 2004. 4. J. Vazquez and C. Malcolm, Distributed multirobot exploration maintaining a mobile network In Proceedings of Second IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Systems, pp. 113 - 118 Vol.3, June 2004 5. W. Burgard, M. Moors, C. Stachniss, F. Schneider, Coordinated multirobot exploration IEEE Transactions on Robotics, volume 21,pp. 376386, 2005. 6. Weihua Shenga, Qingyan Yangb, Jindong Tanc, Ning Xid Distributed multi-robot coordination in area exploration Published in Journal Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Volume 54 Issue 12, December, 2006 7. Martijn N. Rooker, Andreas Birk Multi robot exploration under the constraints of wireless networking published in Control Engineering Practice, Volume 15, Issue 4, pp 435-445, 2007.

References
8. Alejandro R. Mosteo, Luis Mont Multi-Robot Routing under Limited Communication Range published in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 1531 1536,May 2008 Pasadena CA, USA. 9. Jayasree chakraborty, Amit Konar, L.C Jain and Uday K. Chakraborty, A Distributed Cooperative Multi-Robot Path Planning Using Differential Evolution, in Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems ,pp. 718 725,2008,Hong Kong. 10. Yuta Nakazono, Hiroyoshi Miwa Exploration Algorithms by Multiple Robots in Challenged Communication Environment published in International Conference on Intelligent Networking and Collaborative Systems, pp. 380 385,2010, Thessaloniki. 11. Emam Fathy Mohamed, Khaled El-Metwally, A.R. Hanafy An Improved Tangent Bug Method Integrated with Artificial Potential Field for Multi-robot Path Planning published in International Symposium on innovations in Intelligent Systems and Applications (INISTA) pp. 555 559, June 2011. 12. Rashmi Ranjan Sahoo, Pratyusha Rakshit, Md Taslim Haidar, Sujata Swarnalipi, Buni lk. Balabantaray, Sharmilla Mohapatra Navigational Path Planning of Multi-Robot using Honey Bee Mating Optimization Algorithm (HBMO) published in International Journal of Computer Applications, pp. 1-8 Volume 27 No.11, August 2011. 13. Latitia Matignon, Laurent Jeanpierre, Abdel-Illah Mouaddib, Distributed Value Functions for Multi-Robot Explorationa Position Paper the 10th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS'11), Workshop of Multi-Agent Sequential Decision Making in Uncertain Multi-Agent Domains (MSDM), 2011. 14. www.cs.lamar.edu/faculty/disrael/COSC5100/ProjectReportfin.do

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