Flexible and Efficient Use of Robot Resources Using Higher-Order Mobile Agents

Abstract

This paper presents a framework for controlling intelligent robots connected by communication networks. This framework provides novel methods to control coordinated systems using higher-order mobile agents. Higher-order mobile agents are hierarchically structured agents that can contain other mobile agents. The combination of the higher-order mobile agent and mobile multi-robots open a new horizon of efficient use of mobile robot resources. Instead of physical movement of multi-robot, mobile software agents can migrate from one robot to another so that they can find the most suitably equipped and/or the most suitably located robots to perform their task. Thus the framework presented here provides efficient use of robot resources as well as scalability and flexibility.