Simulation Environment For An Autonomous And Decentralized Multi-agent Robotic System

An autonomous and decentralized system called ACTRESS (ACTor based Robot and Equipment Synthetic System) is being under development as an intelligent robot system which can execute high level tasks. ACTRESS is composed of multiple robotic agents. Each robotic agent is called "robotor". A robotor may be a robot, a computing system and any other equip- ments. While researching in this field, many research issues need to have solutions, such issues may include, the communication among the agents and protocols, cooperation among a group of agents, describing the tasks to be executed, multi-agent motion planning, multi-agent task planning, task description, human interface role, solving deadlocks ... etc. The aim of this paper is to develop a simulation environment for an autonomous and decentralized multi-agent robotic system. For this purpose, it is neces- sary to simulate and analyze the main functions of each agent, design and analysis of the actions to be carried out by each agent, analyzing their real time behavior with a variety of situations considering their environ- ment and the treatment of unexpected events. Also, it is aecessary to find out an efficient strategy to realize effective means for the agents to form a cooperating manner that support task execution and problem solv- ing. In parallel with the mentioned purposes the ACTRESS structure is simulated as functions and behavior using the developed simulation environment. This simulation includes a group of mobile robots, human interface and global environment manager. Then, software integration that deal with various aspect of the overall problem is developed. Different experi- ments are performed to analyze the performance of each individual robotor and the overall system.