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Cooperative Robot Deployment: Simulation and Real Experimental Analysis

  • Research Article - Electrical Engineering
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Abstract

Autonomous robot deployment is very attracting feature especially inside unknown area. Virtual force (VF) technique appears as one of the prominent approaches to performing multirobot deployment autonomously. However, most of the existing VF-based approaches lack purposeful deployment. In this work, we present a Cooperative Virtual Force Robot Deployment (COVER) technique. Our approach modifies the original VF approach to overcome this problem and considers the mission requirements such as the number of required robots in each locality (e.g., landmarks are distributed, and each needs a specific number of robots in its vicinity). In addition, COVER expedites the deployment process by establishing a cooperative relation between robots and neighboring landmarks. Extensive simulation experiments have been carried out to assess the performance of COVER along with Hungarian deployment method (a centralized approach), the basic virtual force, and full virtual force. A proof of concept experiment using TurtleBot robots is presented as well to show real implementation of COVER. The simulation and experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of COVER for several performance factors such as total traveled distance, total exchanged messages, and total deployment time.

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Abbreviations

R, \(R_\mathrm{f}\),\(R_\mathrm{a}\) :

Robots, free robot, associated robots

L :

Landmarks

\(d({L}_{j} )\) :

Demand of landmark j

\(N_{r} (R_i )\) :

Neighboring robots of robot \({R}_{i} \)

\(N_{l} (R_i )\) :

Neighbor landmarks of robot \({R}_{i} \)

\({w}_\mathrm{a}\) :

Attractive force

\({w}_\mathrm{r}\) :

Repulsive force

\({d}_{{ij}}\) :

Distance between robot \({R}_{i}\) and robot \({R}_{j} \)

\({d}_{\mathrm{th}} \) :

Distance threshold between robots

\({\Theta }_{{ij}}\) :

Angle between robot \({R}_{i} \) and robot \({R}_{j} \)

\({c}_{\mathrm{th}}\) :

Maximum communication range

\({F}_{{ij}}\) :

Force applied on robot \({R}_{i} \) from robot \({R}_{j} \)

\({F}_{{ir}} \) :

Repulsive force applied on robot \({R}_{i}\) from a landmark

\({F}_{i}\) :

The total force applied on robot i

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support provided by the National Plan for Science, Technology and Innovation (MAARIFAH)—King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology through the Science & Technology Unit at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, award Project No. 11-ELE2147-4.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, 31261, Saudi Arabia

    Gamal Sallam & Uthman Baroudi

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  1. Gamal Sallam
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  2. Uthman Baroudi
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Correspondence to Uthman Baroudi.

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Sallam, G., Baroudi, U. Cooperative Robot Deployment: Simulation and Real Experimental Analysis. Arab J Sci Eng 44, 1843–1854 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-018-3102-9

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