Motion strategies for exploration and map building under uncertainty with multiple heterogeneous robots

In this paper, we present a multi-robot exploration strategy for map building. We consider an indoor structured environment and a team of robots with different sensing and motion capabilities. We combine geometric and probabilistic reasoning to propose a solution to our problem. We formalize the proposed solution using stochastic dynamic programming (SDP) in states with imperfect information. Our modeling can be considered as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP), which is optimized using SDP. We apply the dynamic programming technique in a reduced search space that allows us to incrementally explore the environment. We propose realistic sensor models and provide a method to compute the probability of the next observation given the current state of the team of robots based on a Bayesian approach. We also propose a probabilistic motion model, which allows us to take into account errors (noise) on the velocities applied to each robot. This modeling also allows us to simulate imperfect robot motions, and to estimate the probability of reaching the next state given the current state. We have implemented all our algorithms and simulations results are presented. Graphical Abstract