A Hierarchical Team of Robots Capable of Carrying Out Complex Missions in a Wide Variety of Environments, Both Military and Civilian

R econnaissance and surveillance are important activities for both military and civilian organizations. Hostage and survivor rescue missions, illicit drug raids, and responses to chemical or toxic waste spills are just some of the operations requiring a reconnaissance or surveillance component. To address these needs, we have developed a distributed heterogeneous robotic team that is based mainly on a miniature robotic system. Because some of these operations require covert action, we have chosen to make most of the robots on the team extremely small so that they will evade detection. This small size also allows them to be easily transported and allows for a greater number (dozens) to be brought into use for a single operation. The small size and large number also make individual robots expendable without jeopardizing the overall mission. We call these small robots scouts, and they act as the roving eyes, ears, noses, etc. of our system. The small size of the scouts creates great challenges, however. The individual components must all be exceedingly small and the overall design of the scout must make maximum use of all available space. Further, the scouts must make efficient use of resources (e.g., batteries) in order to survive for a