Interference as a tool for designing and evaluating multi-robot controllers

TLDR

Cooperative group behavior design for robots is a complex, art‑like process requiring extensive reprogramming and parameter tuning. The paper proposes using interference as a pragmatic, general‑purpose tool to guide the design and evaluation of distributed multi‑robot controllers. Interference, a directly measurable property of a multi‑robot system, is employed to address key control issues and to inform behavior arbitration schemes. Experiments with four mobile robots on a foraging task demonstrate that interference can be used to design and evaluate three different controller implementations, with data analyses supporting its effectiveness.

Abstract

Designing and implementing cooperative group behaviors for robots is considered something of a black art involving an extensive amount of reprogramming and parameter adjustment. What seems to be lacking is a pragmatic, practical, general-purpose tool that would both guide the design and structure the evaluation of controllers for distributed real-world multi-robot tasks. In this paper, we propose the use of interference. between robots as one such simple tool for designing and evaluating multi-robot controllers. We explore how key issues in multi-robot control can be addressed using interference, a directly measurable property of a multi-robot system. We discuss how behavior arbitration schemes, i.e., the choice of controllers, can be made and adjusted using interference. As an experimental example, we demonstrate three different implementations of a collection clean-up (foraging) task using four physical mobile robots, and present analyses of the experimental data gathered from trials of all three implementations.