Information sharing among multiple robots for cooperation in cellular robotic system

Problems of information sharing among multi-robots in cellular robotic systems (CEBOT) are described. Information sharing in three aspects (task descriptions, acquiring of robot states and acquiring of environment states) and hierarchical control architecture related to the sharing in three levels are proposed to enhance the efficiency of reasoning and planning for cooperative actions. Then, sensing information sharing related to acquiring of environment states is mainly dealt with, which is refereed to as distributed sensing focussing on sensing information exchange and integration among robots. Through analyzing the nature of distributed sensing, an approach for integration of distributed sensing information, based on evidential reasoning, is proposed. The proposed approach is examined with an application environment map building and maintaining through simulation, and the effectiveness of the distributed sensing approach for acquiring of environment states is shown.