Multi-agent Trail Making for Stigmergic Navigation

Robotic agents in dynamic environments must sometimes navigate using only their local perceptions. In complex environments, features such as terrain undulation, geometrically complex barriers, and similar obstacles form local maxima and minima that can trap and hinder agents using reactive navigation. Moreover, agents navigating in a purely reactive fashion forget their past discoveries quickly. Preserving this knowledge usually requires that each agent construct a detailed world model as it explores or be forced to rediscover desired goals each time. Explicit communication can also be required to share discoveries and coordinate actions. The cost of explicit communication can be substantial, however, making it desirable to avoid its use in many domains. Accordingly, in this paper we present a method of cooperative trail making that allows a team of agents using reactive navigation to assist one another in their explorations through implicit (stigmergic) communication.