Multi-robot Cooperative Map Building Problem And Simulation Platform Design

Map building is one of the basic missions for an intelligent autonomous mobile robot, and the mission can be accomplished more effectively using the cooperation among the robots. Based on mobile robot AS-R, the problem of map-building using multi-robot cooperation is studied.The organization of multi-robot system is analyzed, and then a hierarchical organization composed of a centre and a group of autonomous mobile robots is designed. Approaching to cooperative multi-robot map-building in an unknown environment, first, to make sure whether the region covered by a grid belongs to the undecomposed region, an improved map describing method based on the occupancy grid is proposed. Second, based on the above, to reduce the repeated exploration of the robots and improve the efficiency of the system, an improved map building method based on dynamic region decomposition is designed.A simulation system based on the LAN communication is designed with Visual C++ 6.0 to prove the method. It can be divided into two parts, the server and the client. The server part simulates the centre to achieve building the environment map, the mission of the robots and other functions. The client part simulates the autonomous mobile robot to achieve planning the route of the robot, building the trace of the robot and other functions. The data exchange between the two parts is established through LAN communication. Finally, the simulation result shows that the trace of the two robots can spread all over the area that isn't occupied by the obstacle, proves the method is effective.