Abstract:

For the problem of communication constraint between robots caused by limited communication range,a new approach for cooperative multi-robot simultaneous localization and mapping(SLAM) is proposed.The robots adopt an active exploration strategy based on optimal control to build submaps around themselves, and use the extended Kalman filter(EKF) to estimate and maintain the states of submaps during every map-building cycle, and connect with other robots at the end of every cycle, sending and fusing submaps.At the same time, in order to avoid the over-fusion problem, which is introduced by limited communication range, it is suggested to save the submaps of every map-buildig cycle, sending and fusing the incremental parts when the robots meet each other. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the presented approach.