A review of research in multi-robot systems

Abstract

Formally, a collection of two or more autonomous mobile robots working together are termed as teams or societies of mobile robots. In multi robot systems simple robots are allowed to coordinate with each other to achieve some well defined goals. In these kinds of systems robots are far less capable as an entity, but the real power lies in cooperation of multiple robots. The simplicity of multi-robots have produced a potentially wide set of applications such as military missions (battlefield surveillance), searching for survivors in disaster hit areas, parallel and simultaneous transportation of vehicles, and delivery of payloads. Although the research on multi-robot systems has attracted considerable attention worldwide in the past decade, the research in this area is still in its infancy. This paper surveys various interaction techniques in multi robot systems which are important with respect to goal attainment and task completion.