Adaptive Search Space Division




Foraging can be considered one of the key issues in Cooperative Robotics. This task requires a set of robots to inspect the world for possible targets, such as food, and deliver them to a determined area, denoted as home.

Interference between Robots that are performing the same task is one of the major problems in group behavior. Robots act as greedy agents: In order fulfilling their own goals, they often retard achievement by interfering with other Robots that have the same goal.

This project focuses on assigning each Robot a different area in space to look for pucks (targets). Once a Robot has a puck, it delivers it to the neighboring area that is closer to home . It is intended to minimize the interference between robots by assigning them different work locations in space. However, with this approach problems arise when one of the Robots dies (stops working or becomes trapped in a hole).

Robots communicate , via radio, in order to adapt their behavior to the status of other Robots. Messages like ``I'm alive'' or ``I'm moving'' are constantly sent to guarantee that the overall task will be achieved. If one of the Robot dies, the rest of the living Robots will modify their behavior and expand their searching areas, so that they can cover the space left by the dead Robot.



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Miguel Schneider
Last modified: Tue Jul 7 03:03:45 EDT