Open multiagent architecture extended to distributed autonomous robotic systems

Our research deals with the design and experiment of a control architecture for an autonomous outdoor mobile robot which uses mainly vision for perception. In this case of a single robot, we have designed a hybrid architecture with an attention mechanism that allows dynamic selection of perception processes. Building on this work, we have developed an open multi-agent architecture, for standard multi-task operating system, using the C++ programming language and Posix threads. Our implementation features of efficient and fully generic messages between agents, automatic acknowledgement receipts and built-in synchronization capabilities. Knowledge is distributed among robots according to a collaborative scheme: every robot builds its own representation of the world and shares it with others. Pieces of information are exchanged when decisions have to be made. Experiments are to be led with two outdoor ActiveMedia Pioneer AT mobile robots. Distributed perception, using mainly vision but also ultrasound, will serve as proof of concept.