On the performance and scalability of multi-robot patrolling algorithms

Abstract

Several distinct multi-robot patrolling strategies have been presented for the last decade in the context of security applications. However, there is a deficit of studies comparing these strategies, namely in terms of their performance and the scalability in the number of robots. For that reason, in this paper, an evaluation of five representative patrolling approaches is presented. This analysis is based on realistic simulation results using ROS and a performance metric represented by the average idleness of the topological environment (i.e., graph) that represents the area to patrol. The results presented help to identify which strategies enable enhanced team scalability and which are the most suitable approaches given any environment.