This paper presents a complete system for scheduling transportation orders to a fleet of autonomous mobile robots in service environments. It consists of the autonomous mobile robots, a user friendly interface to acquire the orders for the robots via internet and to store them in a database, a general language for modeling multistorey buildings with XML and the scheduling algorithms. The model ...

To be truly useful, mobile robots need to be fairly autonomous and easy to control. This is especially true in situations where multiple robots are used, due to the increase in sensory information and the fact that the robots can interfere with one another. This paper describes a system that integrates autonomous navigation, a task executive, task planning, and an intuitive graphical user inter...

This research focuses on the design of teams of mobile robots that are able to operate in real life situations and non-controlled environments. In order to perform any service, robots have firstly to display two properties: autonomy and self-sufficiency. An autonomous and self-sufficient robot that takes part in a team does not necessarily contribute to the well-functioning of its partners. Thu...

Search and rescue robots are intended to work as aids to human rescuers. One of the research challenges is how to combine autonomous operation with operator control. This paper presents a single software system which independently operates several physically distinct robots. One operator can coordinate several robots by switching their individual mode between autonomous and remote operation. Fo...

There are examples of robotic systems in which autonomous mobile robots self-assemble into larger connected entities. However, existing systems display little or no autonomous control over the shape of the connected entity thus formed. We describe a novel distributed mechanism that allows autonomous mobile robots to self-assemble into pre-specified patterns. Global patterns are ‘grown’ using lo...

The distributed coordination and control of a set of autonomous mobile robots is a problem widely studied in a variety of fields, such as engineering, artificial intelligence, artificial life, robotics. Generally, in these areas the problem is studied mostly from an empirical point of view. In contrast, we aim to understand the fundamental limitations on what a set of autonomous mobile robots c...

The following paper reviews recent developments in the field of optimization of space robotics. The extent of focus of this paper is on the perception (robotic sense of analyzing surroundings) in space robots in the exploration of extra-terrestrial planets. Robots play a crucial role in exploring extra-terrestrial and planetary bodies. Their advantages are far from being counted on finger tips....

This ethnographic study suggests that social structures such as the sex segregation of jobs may impact how different groups of workers make sense of robots in their work environment. Designers may need to take such structures into account if mobile autonomous robots are to operate successfully alongside humans in the workplace. Index Terms – Robots, sensemaking, social structures, work.

Artificial intelligence and robotics are rapidly advancing in their quest to build truly autonomous agents. In particular, autonomous robots are envisioned to be deployed into our society in the not-so-distant future in many different application domains, ranging from assistive robots for health-care settings, to combat robots on the battlefield. Critically, all these robots will have to have t...

Many manufacturing companies use autonomous robots to solve a variety of assembly and sorting problems. However, only a few attempts have been made at creating mobile robots capable of autonomously assembling a building or other such structure. The key to this problem is to design a single robot capable of doing the task efficiently and then replicating the core design to create a team of robot...