Capabilities in Heterogeneous Multi Robot Systems

Robotic systems are desirable in many applications, particularly when the aim is to reduce human presence, for example in dangerous scenarios such as search and rescue missions. Such domains are typically dynamic and highly unpredictable, actions of robots are nondeterministic and limited bandwidth and communication failures further add to the hostility of the environment. Accurate predictions of the outcomes of a robot’s actions are virtually impossible in such domains. For such robotic systems to operate in realtime, approximative models and algorithms are required which help to estimate the outcome with highest possible confidence. Heterogeneous multi-robot systems are characterized by the diversity of the robots, each contributing different capabilities. Increasing variety of robotic systems create the need for flexible architectures enabling easy integration of new robot configurations into existing multi-robot systems. This requires methods for general reasoning about what different robots are capable of doing. Although many aspects of heterogeneous multi-robot systems have been widely studied, few researchers explicitly formalize robot capabilities. A model of capabilities can prove very useful for describing and reasoning about the diversity in a multi-robot system. In this paper I present a framework that formalizes a robot’s capabilities, abstracting from underlying robot architectures and providing a means to estimate a robot’s performance.