Performance Analysis of Task Allocation for Mobile Robot Exploration Under Energy Constraints

Abstract

Mobile robots are effective in search and rescue missions, as well as exploration and surveillance. Autonomous exploration is based on the detection and traversal of frontiers defined by environmental scanning. Many researchers proposed many approaches to successfully explore the entire environment with the use of a frontier. We analyze few approaches in this paper based on three critical factors: The environment's geometry, the laser scanner's field of view, and the robot's energy consumption. Additionally, we analyze the effect of altering the environment's geometry on the robot's energy consumption. Simultaneously, we analyze the impact of changing the laser sensor's field of view on the robot's energy consumption. We can also see the impact of the environment's geometry and the FOV of the laser scanner on the robot's completion time and cost to cover the entire environment. We compared six different Task allocation approaches on two other maps using three different laser scanners (Hokuyo URG1-04LX-UG01, Sick LMS200, and Sick Tim561) and a single pioneer 2-Dx robot.