DARS 04 Keynote Lecture

June 24


Communication-sensitive Planning and Behavior for Multi-robot Teams
Ronald C. Arkin
Mobile Robot Laboratory
Georgia Tech

As part of DARPA's MARS Vision 2020 program, researchers at the Georgia Tech Mobile Robot Laboratory are developing a host of new techniques in support of reliable mission execution for a team of robots in the presence of unreliable communication. Specifically, behavioral techniques for communications preservation, communications recovery, and planning for robust communications are all considered. In this talk, a survey of our earlier work on communications among teams of robots is first described, and then new specific techniques developed for use in mobile ad hoc networks operating in dynamic and unstructured environments are presented. Results are shown from simulations studies, robotic experiments on the Georgia Tech campus, and field tests conducted at Ft. Benning, Georgia.