Coordinated exploration for labyrinthine environments with application to the Pursuit-Evasion problem

TL;DR

This paper presents a multirobot cooperation strategy for pursuit-evasion in labyrinthine environments, utilizing knowledge sharing, critical point search, and a task distribution protocol to enhance team-based exploration.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cooperative approach with a complete algorithm for robot motion planning and a protocol for task distribution in pursuit-evasion scenarios.

Findings

Effective multirobot cooperation demonstrated

Algorithm successfully computes pursuit strategies

Improved resource utilization in exploration

Abstract

This paper introduces a multirobot cooperation approach to solve the "pursuit evasion" problem for mobile robots that have omnidirectional vision sensors. The main characteristic of this approach is to implement a real cooperation between robots based on knowledge sharing and makes them work as a team. A complete algorithm for computing a motion strategy of robots is also presented. This algorithm is based on searching critical points in the environment. Finally, the deliberation protocol which distributes the exploration task among the team and takes the best possible outcome from the robots resources is presented.