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Multi-robot cooperation-based mobile printer system

Authors :
Jong-Hwan Kim
Kang-Hee Lee
Source :
Robotics and Autonomous Systems. 54:193-204
Publication Year :
2006
Publisher :
Elsevier BV, 2006.

Abstract

This paper proposes a mobile printer system (MPS) based on multi-robot cooperation. The system consists of multiple mobile robots, a wireless LAN system, a graphic user interface (GUI), and a host computer. The GUI comprises a user input section, a task allocation optimization section, and a control and communication section. Its operation is as follows: a user draws a picture on an input window of the GUI, and then the host computer commands client printer-robots to reproduce the same on a paper in a finite time. To control multiple robots during this process, two kinds of multi-robot control architectures along with a collision-free arbitration configuration are proposed. One is a decentralized control architecture, which employs subsumption architecture based on behavior-based robotics. The robots continue to seek the nearest line and to draw it repeatedly until all lines are drawn. This architecture needs no pre-planning and is fault-tolerant. Another is a centralized control architecture, which employs an evolutionary algorithm (EA). The host computer optimizes the task (finding time-optimal path) allocation for each robot by using an evolutionary algorithm and sends the optimized job sequence to the robots. To minimize the elapsed time in drawing all the lines, an evolutionary algorithm with a representation of an individual suitable for the MPS is employed for the task optimization. This architecture can minimize the elapsed time effectively and offers the option of distance-optimality in addition to time-optimality. The proposed architectures are simulated and real experiments with three omni-directional robots are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness and the applicability of the proposed mobile printer system.

Details

ISSN :
09218890
Volume :
54
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Robotics and Autonomous Systems
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........09be328bf235c5d148e5d038e97c4b22
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2005.11.005