2000 | Wolfram Burgard† Mark Moors‡ Dieter Fox‡ Reid Simmons‡ Sebastian Thrun‡
This paper addresses the problem of exploring an unknown environment using a team of robots, aiming to minimize overall exploration time. The key challenge is to coordinate the actions of multiple robots by selecting appropriate target points that allow them to explore different regions simultaneously. The proposed approach integrates occupancy grid maps from individual robots to construct a global map, considering both the costs of reaching target points and the utility of these points based on the unexplored area they can cover. The utility is reduced for other robots when a target point is assigned to a specific robot. This technique has been implemented and tested in real-world experiments and simulations, demonstrating significant improvements in exploration time compared to previous approaches. The method differs from existing techniques by explicitly coordinating robots to avoid selecting the same target points, leading to more efficient exploration. Future work could explore more sophisticated strategies and improved area estimation techniques.This paper addresses the problem of exploring an unknown environment using a team of robots, aiming to minimize overall exploration time. The key challenge is to coordinate the actions of multiple robots by selecting appropriate target points that allow them to explore different regions simultaneously. The proposed approach integrates occupancy grid maps from individual robots to construct a global map, considering both the costs of reaching target points and the utility of these points based on the unexplored area they can cover. The utility is reduced for other robots when a target point is assigned to a specific robot. This technique has been implemented and tested in real-world experiments and simulations, demonstrating significant improvements in exploration time compared to previous approaches. The method differs from existing techniques by explicitly coordinating robots to avoid selecting the same target points, leading to more efficient exploration. Future work could explore more sophisticated strategies and improved area estimation techniques.