A World Model for Multi-Robot Teams with Communication

In principle, a robot member of a multi-robot team with teammates that can communicate their own sensing can build a more accurate world model by incorporating shared information from its teammates than by relying only on its own sensing. However, in practice, building a consistent world model that combines a robot’s own sensing with information communicated by teammate robots is a challenging task. In this paper, we present in detail our approach to constructing such a world model in a multi-robot team. We introduce two separate world models, namely anindividual world modelthat stores one robot’s state, and ashared world modelthat stores the state of the team. We present procedures to effectively merge information in these two world models. We overcome the problem of high communication latency by using shared information on an as-needed basis. The success of our world model approach is validated by experimentation in the robot soccer domain. The results show that a team using a world model that incorporates shared information is more successful and robust at tracking a dynamic object in its environment than a team that does not use shared information. The paper includes a comprehensive description of the data structures and algorithms, as implemented for our CM-Pack’02 team, which because the RoboCup 2002 world champion in the Sony legged-robot league.