The problem with multiple robots

Abstract

Research in multiple, robotic agents is gaining the interest of an ever increasing number of researchers. Many of these researchers have previously worked in simulation or with single robots, or both. Making the transition from a simulator to the real world can be very trying and frustrating to someone with no expe-rience with such a project. The same goes for making the transition from a single robot to multiple robots. There are a number of issues that arise, mostly of the practical and pragmatic variety, that escape consider-ation by researchers making these transitions for the rst time. We hope to highlight the most important of these issues { discovered primarily through expe-rience with working on multi{robot projects, two of which are discussed in the paper { so that other re-searchers can give them full consideration when work-ing on their own projects. In addition, we give some suggestions as to how to eliminate or minimize the negative impact these issues might have upon the de-velopment of a multiple robot project.