Swarm Based Coverage Using Multiple Informed Leaders

Abstract

Abstract— Robotic exploration typically involves navigation through unknown terrains. In this paper, collaborative strategy for coverage is presented, in which the concept of informed agents as a leader in a swarm has been introduced for autonomous coverage. The small population of robots in large swarms act as informed leaders, and help others to accomplish their tasks related to the exploration. These informed leaders receive information about the environment from external sources (e.g. humans, media etc.), and influence uninformed robots using their swarm behaviors. Multiple Swarm behaviors have been designed for swarm navigation, and dynamic selection of the informed leaders. This approach has been tested in simulation of homogeneous swarm, with and without informed leaders. The number of informed agents needed to guide the swarm effectively has been investigated as well. Experimental results showed that the introduction of informed agents improves the coverage task