Centibots Large scale robot teams.pdfVIP

CENTIBOTS Large Scale Robot Teams Kurt Konolige, Charles Ortiz, Regis Vincent, Andrew Agno, Michael Eriksen, Benson Limketkai, Mark Lewis, Linda Briesemeister, Enrique Ruspini Artificial Intelligence Center SRI International Menlo Park, CA Dieter Fox, Jonathan Ko, Benjamin Stewart Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of Washington Seattle, WA Leonidas Guibas Computer Science Department Stanford University Stanford, CA Abstract: As part of the DARPA Software for Distributed Robotics Program, SRI International, Stanford University, the University of Washington, and ActivMedia Robotics are designing and implementing a computational framework for the coordination of large robot teams, consisting of at least 100 small, resource limited mobile robots (CentiBOTS), on an indoor reconnaissance task. Key words: Multirobot mapping and surveillance 2 CentiBOTS 1. 101 ROBOTS The requirements of autonomy, size, low power, and limited computation available on small robots place extraordinary constraints on communication and coordination of robot platoons. Individual robots, executing a limited set of behavioral programs, must cooperate to produce a global behavior that satisfies the goals of the mission. Current robot architectures rely on large, power-hungry subsystems for mobility, communication, and control; furthermore, they do not address the problem of coordinating large numbers of robots. In the CentiBOTS project, we envisage a system of a large number of mobile robots able to effectively explore, map, and surveil the interior of a building. The name of the project comes from our goal of having 100 robots performing the task. Each robot is minimally capable of self-localization in a map and communication with nearby robots. Some are more specialized for tasks such as mapping or tracking people, with different degrees of performance (and consequent computational and sensor abilities). The robots must func