Simulated Multi-robot Tactical Missions in Urban Warfare

Since late 90’s of the last century, rapid advances in technology, mechanical engineering, miniaturization, telecommunications and informatics enabled development and routine deployment of sophisticated robots in many real world domains. Besides many applications in assembly industry, e.g., in car, or electronics assembly lines, defense organizations, together with space exploration and mining industries belong to the most demanding and optimistic users of robotic technology [23]. Especially in the military domain we nowadays witness a routine deployment of robotic assets in the field. Some of the popular examples of such robots include unmanned aerial vehicles/systems (UAV/UAS), be it conventional fixed-wing aircrafts (CTOL a conventional take-off and landing vehicle), various rotorcrafts, such as single, or multirotor helicopters (VTOL a vertical take-off and landing vehicle), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), unmanned cars (UGV a unmanned ground vehicle), or unattended ground sensors (UGS), such as various acoustic, seismic and chemical sensors, or cameras. Various size and equipment classes of such robots are used in tactical, law enforcement or rescue operations for tasks, such as security surveillance of urban areas, firefighting, or providing situational awareness, mapping and exploration of areas stricken by natural disasters, or tasks in dangerous work environments, such as stabilization of damaged nuclear reactors after an earthquake. The robots are usually performing either manipulation tasks, or provide situational awareness to human task forces by information collection, such as continuous video streaming, acquiring static imagery or analysis of chemical, or nuclear hazards [17]. Even though we recently witnessed rapid advances in control of robots in scenarios such as e.g., autonomous cars [24], or service robotics [32, 6], the state of the