Multi-Robot Search and Rescue: A Potential Field Based Approach

Summary. This paper describes two implementations of a potential field sharing multi-robot system which we term as pessimistic and optimistic. Unlike other multirobot systems in which coordination is designed explicitly, it is an emergent property of our system. The robots perform no reasoning and are purely reactive in nature. We extend our previous work in simulated search and rescue where there was only one target to the search for multiple targets. As in our previous work the sharing systems with six or more robots outperformed the equivalent non-sharing system. We conclude that potential field sharing has a positive impact on robots involved in a search and rescue problem.