Distributed Service-Based Cooperation in Aerial/Ground Robot Teams Applied to Fire Detection and Extinguishing Missions

This paper presents a system for the coordination of aerial and ground robots for applications such as surveillance and intervention in emergency management. The overall system architecture is described. An important part for the coordination between robots is the task allocation strategy. A distributed market-based algorithm, called S+T, has been developed to solve the multi-robot task allocation problem in applications that require cooperation among the robots to accomplish all the tasks. Using this algorithm, robots can provide transport and communication relay services dynamically to other robots during the missions. Moreover, the paper presents a demonstration with a team of heterogeneous robots (aerial and ground) cooperating in a mission of fire detection and extinguishing. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden and The Robotics Society of Japan, 2010