Coordinated recharging of mobile robots during exploration

Abstract

We compare five policies for teams of mobile robots to share a limited number of charging points while exploring a structured, unknown environment. Since it is infeasible to precompute an optimized schedule due to a limited time horizon, an energy-aware planner is used for adaptively deciding when and where to recharge. The coordination between robots is based on market economy giving them the flexibility to incorporate multiple objectives into a single cost function. The presented policies are evaluated through simulations with different robot team sizes on different maps. We measure the exploration gain in explored area and the exploration cost in traveled distance over time. We compare the market-based approach to a simple first-come, first-served approach. Results demonstrate the applicability for multi-robot exploration and show the strengths and weaknesses of each policy.