The Robotics Institute

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

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Abstract

In the extreme environments posed by war fighting, fire fighting, and nuclear accident response, the cost of direct human exposure is levied in terms of injury and death. Robotic alternatives must address effective operations while removing humans from danger. This is profoundly challenging, as extreme environments inflict cumulative performance damage on exposed robotic agents. Sensing and perception are among the most vulnerable components. We present a distributed robotic system that enables autonomous reconnaissance and mapping in urban structures using teams of robots. Robot teams scout remote sites, maintain operational tempos, and successfully execute tasks, principally the construction of 3-D Maps, despite multiple agent failures. Using an economic model of agent interaction based on a free market architecture, a virtual platform (a robot colony) is synthesized where task execution does not directly depend on individual agents within the colony.

Keywords

Distributed Robotics, Free Market Architecture, Cooperative Stereo, 3-D Mapping, Robot Colony

Notes

Sponsor: DARPA

Associated Center(s) / Consortia: Vision and Autonomous Systems Center and Field Robotics Center

Associated Lab(s) / Group(s): Reliable Autonomous Systems Lab and 3D Computer Vision Group

Associated Project(s): Cognitive Colonies and Federation of Intelligent Robotic Explorers Project

Text Reference

Scott Thayer, Bruce Digney, M Bernardine Dias, Anthony (Tony) Stentz, Bart Nabbe, and Martial Hebert, "Distributed Robotic Mapping of Extreme Environments," Proceedings of SPIE: Mobile Robots XV and Telemanipulator and Telepresence Technologies VII, November, 2000.

BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{Thayer_2000_3506,
   author = "Scott Thayer and Bruce Digney and M Bernardine Dias and Anthony (Tony) Stentz and Bart Nabbe and Martial Hebert",
   title = "Distributed Robotic Mapping of Extreme Environments",
   booktitle = "Proceedings of SPIE: Mobile Robots XV and Telemanipulator and Telepresence Technologies VII",
   month = "November",
   year = "2000",
   volume = "4195",
}

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