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The Project

We are working in cooperation with the ESAII (Departament d'Enginyeria de Sistemes, Automàtica i Informàtica Industrial) of the Technical University of Catalonia in a project involving a troup of small autonomous robots designed to ccoperatively explore unknown environments.

The task of this troup is to obtain the map of an unknown structured environment. Different robots show different behaviours: rutinaries (rather low probability of turning) normal (a higher probability of turning) and anxious (a still higher probability of turning). An interesting aspect is that when they meet, they transfer each other the perceived environment. Sharing information in this way, allows the host computer (to which the robots return to deliver what they have preceived or have been communicated by other robots) to build the most plausible map (using fuzzy techniques) based not only on the information brought by the successfully returning robots but also on the information of those that did not return but that met one or more returning robots.

The sensing capability of each robot is based on IR sensors for environment perception and a relatively accurate odometric system for dead reckoning. The communication with the other robots and with the host is achieved by one omnidirectional IR emitter/receiver.

The IIIA Team

IIIA