Multiple agent architecture for a multiple robot system

Abstract

I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Controlling systems with multiple robots is quickly becoming the next large hurdle that must be overcome for groups of robots to successfully function as a team. An agent oriented approach for this problem is presented in this thesis. By using an agent oriented method, the robots can act independently yet still work together. To be able to establish communities of robots, a basic agent oriented control system for each robot must first be implemented. This thesis introduces a novel method to create Physical Robot Agents, promoting a separation of cognitive and reactive behaviours into a two layer system. These layers are further abstracted into key subsections that are required for the Physical Robot Agents to function. To test this architecture, experiments are performed with physical robots to determine the feasibility of this approach