Task-Allocation and Coordination of Multiple Robots for Planetary Exploration

Abstract

We address the problem of dynamic task allocation and present a review of three multi-robot coordination strategies we have studied to address this problem. Each strategy is tested using embodied multirobot experiments within a separate problem domain. The three experimental problem domains (object tracking, object manipulation, and emergency-handling) are loosely motivated by future cooperating planetary robot rovers. For ease of comparison, we situate the three approaches within a unified framework, and report experimental results. 1