Bio-inspired on-line path planner for cooperative exploration of unknown environment by a Multi-Robot System

Abstract This paper aims to present a cooperative and distributed navigation strategy, that is an on-line path planner, for an autonomous multi-robot system. The robots are intended to navigate and explore an unknown environment in order to find and reach obligatory passage points or way-points (goals), and then achieve a known final position. All robots in the team are homogeneous, independent and have limited communication skills. However they interact among them and with the environment to autonomously decide about their paths and tasks: if they should explore the environment, or avoid visiting a previously explored region, or to reach a discovered goal. Information sharing is directly carried out when the robots are into a communication area and/or indirectly by stigmergy. In this case, artificial pheromone, as a repulsive field, is used to mark regions that have already been explored by other members of the team, therefore avoiding redundant exploration and time waste. Fuzzy controllers are used for robots’ motion. The proposed on line path planner performance is evaluated in different simulated environment scenarios and the main results are presented.