Abstract
We examine the practical problem of a mobile autonomous robot performing a long-duration survey task, during which it must recharge its batteries periodically. We present a scalable, online, heuristic method that allows the robot to recharge efficiently, thus maximizing its rate of work. The method is a direct application of the rate-maximizing foraging model, which seeks to explain the behaviour of animals solving related problems. Simulation results suggest that the method performs very well compared to optimal and naive heuristic approaches.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Austin, D., Fletcher, L., Zelinsky, A.: Mobile robotics in the long term - exploring the fourth dimension. In: Proc. Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 613–618 (2001)
Ieropoulos, I., Greenman, J., Melhuish, C.: Imitating metabolism: Energy autonomy in biologically inspired robotics. In: Proc. of Symp. on Imitation in Animals and Artifacts, pp. 191–194 (2003)
Litus, Y., Vaughan, R.T., Zebrowski, P.: The frugal feeding problem: Energy-efficient, multi-robot, multi-place rendezvous. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Apr. 2007, pp. 27–32. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2007)
Michaud, F., Robichaud, E.: Sharing charging stations for long-term activity of autonomous robots. In: Proc. IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, vol. 3, pp. 2746–2751. IEEE, Los Alamitos (2002)
Seth, A.K.: The ecology of action selection: Insights from artificial life. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (In Press)
Silverman, M., Nies, D.M., Jung, B., Sukhatme, G.S.: Staying alive: A docking station for autonomous robot recharging. In: Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, May 2002, pp. 1050–1055. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2002)
Spier, E., McFarland, D.: Possibly optimal decision-making under self-sufficiency and autonomy. Journal of Theoretical Biology 189(3), 317–331 (1997)
Stephens, D.W., Krebs, J.R.: Foraging Theory. Princton Uni. Press, Princton (1986)
Sukhatme, G.S., Dhariwal, A., Zhang, B., Oberg, C., Stauffer, B., Caron, D.A.: The design and development of a wireless robotic networked aquatic microbial observing system. Environmental Engineering Science 24(2), 205–215 (2006)
Sun, Z., Reif, J.: On energy-minimizing paths on terrains for a mobile robot. In: Proc. Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, vol. 3, Sept. 2003, pp. 3782–3788 (2003)
Wettergreen, D., Tompkins, P., Urmson, C., Wagner, M., Whittaker, W.: Sun-synchronous robotic exploration: Technical description and field experimentation. The Int. Journal of Robotics Research 24(1), 3–30 (2005)
Zhang, B., Sukhatme, G.S.: Adaptive sampling for estimating a scalar field using a robotic boat and a sensor network. In: Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 3673–3680. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Wawerla, J., Vaughan, R.T. (2007). Near-Optimal Mobile Robot Recharging with the Rate-Maximizing Forager. In: Almeida e Costa, F., Rocha, L.M., Costa, E., Harvey, I., Coutinho, A. (eds) Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4648. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74913-4_78
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74913-4_78
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-74912-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-74913-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)