Real-Time Cooperative Exploration by Reaction-Diffusion Equation on a Graph

In this paper we present a path planning method for the environment exploration using the reaction-diffusion equation on a graph. We autonomously arrange sub-goals for robots to go along and explore the environment. By using reaction-diffusion on a graph for sub-goals arrangement, we can deal with the emergence of unknown objects or obstacles in the dynamic environment. This method also can explore the environment in real-time and make sure that robots completely explore all the area in the environment. The results given in this paper demonstrate that our method successfully solves exploration problems both in simulations and in real robot experiments.