A Cooperative Multi-Robot Approach to the Mapping and Exploration of Mars

In the AAAI 1 "Life on Mars" competition this year, we intend to employ a multi-robot team which combines traditional methods of autonomous navigation with experimental group arbitration strategies to explore and map a simulated extra-terrestrial environment. By communicating with each other to optimize the search, the robots will be able to explore the environment faster than could a single robot. Group strategies will also be used to coordinate the robot's actions to optimize the retrieval of objects in the environment.