247 research outputs found
An Energy-aware, Fault-tolerant, and Robust Deep Reinforcement Learning based approach for Multi-agent Patrolling Problems
Autonomous vehicles are suited for continuous area patrolling problems.
However, finding an optimal patrolling strategy can be challenging for many
reasons. Firstly, patrolling environments are often complex and can include
unknown environmental factors. Secondly, autonomous vehicles can have failures
or hardware constraints, such as limited battery life. Importantly, patrolling
large areas often requires multiple agents that need to collectively coordinate
their actions. In this work, we consider these limitations and propose an
approach based on model-free, deep multi-agent reinforcement learning. In this
approach, the agents are trained to automatically recharge themselves when
required, to support continuous collective patrolling. A distributed
homogeneous multi-agent architecture is proposed, where all patrolling agents
execute identical policies locally based on their local observations and shared
information. This architecture provides a fault-tolerant and robust patrolling
system that can tolerate agent failures and allow supplementary agents to be
added to replace failed agents or to increase the overall patrol performance.
The solution is validated through simulation experiments from multiple
perspectives, including the overall patrol performance, the efficiency of
battery recharging strategies, and the overall fault tolerance and robustness
Distributed approach for coverage and patrolling missions with a team of heterogeneous aerial robots under communication constraints
Using aerial robots in area coverage applications
is an emerging topic. These applications need a coverage
path planning algorithm and a coordinated patrolling
plan. This paper proposes a distributed approach to
coordinate a team of heterogeneous UAVs cooperating
efficiently in patrolling missions around irregular areas,
with low communication ranges and memory storage
requirements. Hence it can be used with small‐scale
UAVs with limited and different capabilities. The
presented system uses a modular architecture and solves
the problem by dividing the area between all the robots
according to their capabilities. Each aerial robot performs
a decomposition based algorithm to create covering paths
and a ’one‐to‐one’ coordination strategy to decide the
path segment to patrol. The system is decentralized and
fault‐tolerant. It ensures a finite time to share
information between all the robots and guarantees
convergence to the desired steady state, based on the
maximal minimum frequency criteria. A set of
simulations with a team of quad‐rotors is used to
validate the approach
A Survey and Analysis of Multi-Robot Coordination
International audienceIn the field of mobile robotics, the study of multi-robot systems (MRSs) has grown significantly in size and importance in recent years. Having made great progress in the development of the basic problems concerning single-robot control, many researchers shifted their focus to the study of multi-robot coordination. This paper presents a systematic survey and analysis of the existing literature on coordination, especially in multiple mobile robot systems (MMRSs). A series of related problems have been reviewed, which include a communication mechanism, a planning strategy and a decision-making structure. A brief conclusion and further research perspectives are given at the end of the paper
Effective Cooperation and Scalability in Multi-Robot Teams for Automatic Patrolling of Infrastructures
Tese de doutoramento em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores, apresentada ao Departamento de Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores da Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de CoimbraIn the digital era that we live in, advances in technology have proliferated throughout our society, quickening the completion of tasks that were painful in the old days, improving solutions to the everyday problems that we face, and generally assisting human beings both in their professional and personal life. Robotics is a clear example of a broad technological field that evolves every day. In fact, scientists predict that in the upcoming few decades, robots will naturally interact and coexist alongside human beings.
While it is true that robots already have a strong presence in industrial environments, e.g., robotic arms for manufacturing, the average person still looks upon robots with suspicion, since they are not acquainted by such type of technology. In this thesis, the author deploys teams of mobile robots in indoor scenarios to cooperatively perform patrolling missions, which represents an effort to bring robots closer to humans and assist them in monotonous or repetitive tasks, such as supervising and monitoring indoor infrastructures or simply cooperatively cleaning floors.
In this context, the team of robots should be able to sense the environment, localize and navigate autonomously between way points while avoiding obstacles, incorporate any number of robots, communicate actions in a distributed way and being robust not only to agent failures but also communication failures, so as to effectively coordinate to achieve optimal collective performance. The referred capabilities are an evidence that such systems can only prove their reliability in real-world environments if robots are endowed with intelligence and autonomy. Thus, the author follows a line of research where patrolling units have the necessary tools for intelligent decision-making, according to the information of the mission, the environment and teammates' actions, using distributed coordination architectures.
An incremental approach is followed. Firstly, the problem is presented and the literature is deeply studied in order to identify potential weaknesses and research opportunities, backing up the objectives and contributions proposed in this thesis. Then, problem fundamentals are described and benchmarking of multi-robot patrolling algorithms in realistic conditions is conducted. In these earlier stages, the role of different parameters of the problem, like environment connectivity, team size and strategy philosophy, will become evident through extensive empirical results and statistical analysis. In addition, scalability is deeply analyzed and tied with inter-robot interference and coordination, imposed by each patrolling strategy.
After gaining sensibility to the problem, preliminary models for multi-robot patrol with special focus on real-world application are presented, using a Bayesian inspired formalism. Based on these, distributed strategies that lead to superior team performance are described. Interference between autonomous agents is explicitly dealt with, and the approaches are shown to scale to large teams of robots. Additionally, the robustness to agent and communication failures is demonstrated, as well as the flexibility of the model proposed. In fact, by later generalizing the model with learning agents and maintaining memory of past events, it is then shown that these capabilities can be inherited, while at the same time increasing team performance even further and fostering adaptability. This is verified in simulation experiments and real-world results in a large indoor scenario.
Furthermore, since the issue of team scalability is highly in focus in this thesis, a method for estimating the optimal team size in a patrolling mission, according to the environment topology is proposed. Upper bounds for team performance prior to the mission start are provided, supporting the choice of the number of robots to be used so that temporal constraints can be satisfied.
All methods developed in this thesis are tested and corroborated by experimental results, showing the usefulness of employing cooperative teams of robots in real-world environments and the potential for similar systems to emerge in our society.FCT - SFRH/BD/64426/200
Autonomous Vehicle Patrolling Through Deep Reinforcement Learning: Learning to Communicate and Cooperate
Autonomous vehicles are suited for continuous area patrolling problems.
Finding an optimal patrolling strategy can be challenging due to unknown
environmental factors, such as wind or landscape; or autonomous vehicles'
constraints, such as limited battery life or hardware failures. Importantly,
patrolling large areas often requires multiple agents to collectively
coordinate their actions. However, an optimal coordination strategy is often
non-trivial to be manually defined due to the complex nature of patrolling
environments. In this paper, we consider a patrolling problem with
environmental factors, agent limitations, and three typical cooperation
problems -- collision avoidance, congestion avoidance, and patrolling target
negotiation. We propose a multi-agent reinforcement learning solution based on
a reinforced inter-agent learning (RIAL) method. With this approach, agents are
trained to develop their own communication protocol to cooperate during
patrolling where faults can and do occur. The solution is validated through
simulation experiments and is compared with several state-of-the-art patrolling
solutions from different perspectives, including the overall patrol
performance, the collision avoidance performance, the efficiency of battery
recharging strategies, and the overall fault tolerance
Multi-Robot Patrol Algorithm with Distributed Coordination and Consciousness of the Base Station's Situation Awareness
Multi-robot patrolling is the potential application for robotic systems to
survey wide areas efficiently without human burdens and mistakes. However, such
systems have few examples of real-world applications due to their lack of human
predictability. This paper proposes an algorithm: Local Reactive (LR) for
multi-robot patrolling to satisfy both needs: (i)patrol efficiently and
(ii)provide humans with better situation awareness to enhance system
predictability. Each robot operating according to the proposed algorithm
selects its patrol target from the local areas around the robot's current
location by two requirements: (i)patrol location with greater need, (ii)report
its achievements to the base station. The algorithm is distributed and
coordinates the robots without centralized control by sharing their patrol
achievements and degree of need to report to the base station. The proposed
algorithm performed better than existing algorithms in both patrolling and the
base station's situation awareness.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication.
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3D multi-robot patrolling with a two-level coordination strategy
Teams of UGVs patrolling harsh and complex 3D environments can experience interference and spatial conflicts with one another. Neglecting the occurrence of these events crucially hinders both soundness and reliability of a patrolling process. This work presents a distributed multi-robot patrolling technique, which uses a two-level coordination strategy to minimize and explicitly manage the occurrence of conflicts and interference. The first level guides the agents to single out exclusive target nodes on a topological map. This target selection relies on a shared idleness representation and a coordination mechanism preventing topological conflicts. The second level hosts coordination strategies based on a metric representation of space and is supported by a 3D SLAM system. Here, each robot path planner negotiates spatial conflicts by applying a multi-robot traversability function. Continuous interactions between these two levels ensure coordination and conflicts resolution. Both simulations and real-world experiments are presented to validate the performances of the proposed patrolling strategy in 3D environments. Results show this is a promising solution for managing spatial conflicts and preventing deadlocks
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