Online Planning Approaches for Multi-Robot Rendezvous

Abstract

In this paper we study the rendezvous of a group of robots in a bounded environment. The robots do not know the locations of each other. Moreover no robot knows the distance between any pair of robots. A rendezvous location is not determined in advance. For this problem we present two algorithms with different online planning approaches: (1) cluster-search and (2) single-search. In the first approach the robots that meet continue searching as a team. Whereas in the second approach the robots that meet split and continue as single searchers. We investigate and compare the performances of our algorithms through simulations. The results show that the algorithm with the single-search approach performs better than the algorithm with the cluster-search approach. © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.