Section: Application Domains

Multi-robot collaborative coordination

Due to the cost or the risks of using human operators, many tasks of exploration, or of after-disaster intervention are performed by un-manned drones. When communication becomes difficult, e.g., under water, or in spatial exploration, such robots must be autonomous. Complex tasks, such as exploration, or patrolling, or rescue, cannot be achieved by a single robot, and require a self-coordinated fleet of autonomous devices. NeCS team has studied the marine research application, where a fleet of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) self-organize in a formation, adapting to the environment, and reaching a source, e.g., of a pollutant. This has been done in collaboration with IFREMER, within the national project ANR CONNECT and the European FP7 project FeedNetBack. On-going research in the team concerns source localization, with a fleet of mobile robots, including wheeled land vehicles.