Multi-robot Cooperative Task Processing in Great Environment

Multi-robot coordinated control has been practical. In order to apply multi-robot coordinated control technique in cooperative task processing in a great environment, we should allocate task for robots and the robot should locate itself in the environment. To solve multi-robot task allocation and robot localization problem for coordinated multi-robot in great environment, a wireless sensor network, composed of control center, wireless gateway and wireless sensors, was presented to control multi-robot. In order to improve the working efficient of multi-robot, the efficient optimization based multi-robot task allocation mechanism was proposed; by using ant colony algorithm, the task allocation solution was got and informed to robots via wireless sensor network by the control center. By adapting Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) based approach, the robot localization was realized in virtue of the localization information provided by wireless sensors. A wireless sensor network was set up, and containers transporting on a dock by using three robots was simulated. Simulation results shown that multi-robot coordinated control in great environment was realized so that the robots can accomplish the tasks cooperatively with the least time, and the robot localization was realized.

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