Cooperative Multi-robot Box Pushing Inspired by Human Behaviour

This paper investigates mechanisms underlying cooperative behaviour in a group of miniature mobile robots around the problem of coordinating a group of robots to push collectively a heavy object. Numerous solutions to this problem have been proposed [5,7,4]. The performance of these however typically deteriorates as the number of robots increases to more than a dozen. The cause of this is often said to be robot interference—there are many robots but insufficient space to manipulate the object effectively. The situation is particular difficult when the object itself occludes the view of robots [3]. In this case, robots can benefit from division of labour (e.g., see [2]). Here, we take inspiration of the division of labour in teams of humans pushing a large object towards a target location: persons who can see the target push the box only when the transporting direction needs to be corrected, while all other persons simply push the box forward. The two roles in this cooperation are indicated in Fig. 1(a). We have developed a simulation framework based on the Bullet Physics and Enki Libraries 1, see Fig. 1(a). The simulated robot model is the e-puck robot [8]