Experimental Study on the Effects of Communication Range on Cooperative Robotic Search in Complex Environments

Abstract

Communication has an important role in multirobot systems. It can facilitate cooperation, therefore, improve the performance of the system significantly. In this study we investigated the benefits of networked communication by experimentally evaluating the results of two search algorithms which are spiral search and informed random search. The experiments were performed in an experimental area containing obstacles and using e-puck robots where the communication ranges were "simulated" with the help of an overhead camera. Each robot was allowed to (i) keep an occupancy grid based local map of the environment containing also information about the cells it has visited and (ii) exchange this information with the other robots within its communication range. The effect of the size of communication range on the performance of the system defined as the time of completion of the search task (i.e, locating the target), was investigated.