Decentral control of a robot-swarm

Abstract

In this paper, we present an approach to construct a universal architecture to control a team of autonomous robots. The suggested approach is robust against communication problems and robots' hardware failures. The system profits from its decentral architecture. We present, how the control structure is designed and implemented and how basic tasks are scheduled and distributed running the approach. Thereto, we present the three modules of the architecture: A robust communication, a decentral data storage by sensor-fusion, and a decentral task-scheduling. As a matter of fact, we do not focus on a specific implementation but on the concept behind our system-wide approach. For the proof of concept, we reference to an implementation which was honored by the first place of the Open Challenge at RoboCup world championship in Lissboa 2004.