Securing Hostile Terrain with a Robot Team

In some more complicated tasks the use of multiple robots can be advantageous, as there are some tasks that are just not achievable by a single robot. Teams of cooperating robots can accomplish more and faster than individual robots, as is the case in the intruder detection problem. Here, two off-line algorithms are presented for intruder detection in a known environment. In the first approach, the objective is to perform surveillance of a known terrain with multiple robots. The goal is to create a path for every robot, such that the union of all paths generates a full coverage of the terrain and the total coverage time is minimized. Terrain coverage techniques are used to generate just these paths. The second approach will let the robot team perform a security sweep of a known area to detect mobile adversaries. The robots will move from end to end of the map in line formation, preventing enemies to slip through. Securing an area by performing a sweep is a complex task: the coordination between the robots must be tight not to break the sweep line and no space can be left undetected.