Multi-Robot Systems and Cooperative Object Transport: Communications, Platforms, and Challenges

Review Robotics

Robot Operating System 2: Design, architecture, and uses in the wild

Steven Macenski et al.

Summary: This article discusses the development of the Robot Operating System (ROS) and the importance of ROS 2, as well as its impact on accelerating reliable deployment of robot systems.

SCIENCE ROBOTICS (2022)

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Proceedings Paper Computer Science, Information Systems

Networking Architectures and Protocols for Multi-Robot Systems in Agriculture 4.0

Imad Jawhar et al.

Summary: Agriculture 4.0 is a rapidly evolving research area, and multi-robot systems (MRS) play a crucial role in achieving the objectives of smart farms. This paper provides an overview of networking architectures and protocols for MRS systems in agriculture 4.0, and discusses the challenges in robot-to-robot and robot-to-infrastructure communication, with a case study on UAV-based data collection from WSNs in smart farms.

SYSCON 2022: THE 16TH ANNUAL IEEE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEMS CONFERENCE (SYSCON) (2022)

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Review Automation & Control Systems

Multirobot Control Strategies for Collective Transport

Hamed Farivarnejad et al.

Summary: This review summaries the potential application of multirobot systems in collective transport and analyzes and categorizes various control strategies developed over the past three decades. It provides an overview of future directions, focusing on control strategies that can be implemented on robots with expanded autonomous functionality in uncertain environments using limited information.

ANNUAL REVIEW OF CONTROL ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS (2022)

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Review Computer Science, Information Systems

Future FANET with application and enabling techniques: Anatomization and sustainability issues

Ashish Srivastava et al.

Summary: Researchers in the field of engineering have made significant progress in wireless communication, with FANET as an emerging technology receiving widespread attention. The high demand for applications of this technology involves various research and challenges in different aspects.

COMPUTER SCIENCE REVIEW (2021)

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Review Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence

Multi-Robot Coordination Analysis, Taxonomy, Challenges and Future Scope

Janardan Kumar Verma et al.

Summary: This paper provides a comprehensive research study on Multi-Robot Systems (MRS) coordination, covering basic terminology, categorization, application domains, and coordination approaches. By examining recent contributions, strengths, limitations, and future research directions are identified, along with a proposed taxonomy for classification. The analysis also delves into state-of-the-art parameters affecting MRS coordination efficiency and explores ways to improve coordination in various application domains.

JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT & ROBOTIC SYSTEMS (2021)

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Article Robotics

Cooperative Multi-Robot Object Transportation System Based on Hierarchical Quadratic Programming

Daravuth Koung et al.

Summary: The letter presents a constrained optimization-based control law for cooperative logistics mission in a multi-robot system, including tasks like formation control, navigation, and obstacle avoidance. Hierarchical quadratic programming approach is applied to solve for the optimal solution with inclusion of velocity limits for feasibility. The theory is validated through experiments using actual industrial robots.

IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS (2021)

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Article Robotics

ROS-NetSim: A Framework for the Integration of Robotic and Network Simulators

Miguel Calvo-Fullana et al.

Summary: Multi-agent systems are crucial in modern robotics, often requiring coordination among agents through communication. ROS-NetSim serves as an interface between robotic and network simulators, offering a lightweight, modular, and adaptive approach to accurately simulate interactions and loops, regardless of the specific network or physics simulator being used. By providing transparency, independency, and tunability, ROS-NetSim enables high-fidelity representations of robotic and network interactions.

IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS (2021)

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Article Robotics

The Robotarium: Automation of a Remotely Accessible, Multi-Robot Testbed

Sean Wilson et al.

Summary: The Robotarium provides a free, remotely accessible robotics lab for users worldwide, with hundreds of users submitting thousands of experiments. To address the increasing experiment submission rate, efforts have been made to enable the Robotarium to operate autonomously, resulting in improvements in system robustness and reliability, reducing the need for human intervention.

IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS (2021)

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Article Automation & Control Systems

Design and Experimental Validation of a Distributed Cooperative Transportation Scheme

Henrik Ebel et al.

Summary: By leveraging explicit communication and cooperation of multiple robots, a fully distributed decision-making and control scheme is developed for transporting polygonal objects with a group of mobile robots, enabling them to cooperate as equals without central control. The scheme includes challenges such as self-reliant determination of robot configurations around the object and interrobot negotiation on role assignments, while making use of optimization-based schemes for unprecedented flexibility in adapting to different scenarios. Simulation-based analysis and hardware-in-the-loop experiments demonstrate the practical applicability and potential of the proposed scheme for cooperative robotic tasks.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (2021)

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Article Computer Science, Information Systems

Intelligent Multi-Robot System for Collaborative Object Transportation Tasks in Rough Terrains

Daegyun Choi et al.

Summary: This study proposes an intelligent and decentralized approach for a multi-robot system using a genetic fuzzy system to perform an object transportation mission and ensure the stability of the overall system in a rough terrain environment.

ELECTRONICS (2021)

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Proceedings Paper Automation & Control Systems

Deep reinforcement learning of event-triggered communication and control for multi-agent cooperative transport

Kazuki Shibata et al.

Summary: This paper explores a multi-agent reinforcement learning approach to address the design problem of communication and control strategies for multi-agent cooperative transport. By utilizing event-triggered architecture, the framework efficiently balances transport performance and communication savings.

2021 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION (ICRA 2021) (2021)

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Proceedings Paper Automation & Control Systems

Robust Distributed Estimation of the Algebraic Connectivity for Networked Multi-robot Systems

Joanna Malli et al.

Summary: The paper proposes a distributed algorithm to estimate the algebraic connectivity of the communication graph in a networked multi-robot system, with robustness and fast convergence properties that can be adjusted independently via design parameters. The theoretical findings are confirmed through simulated paradigms, showing the superiority of the proposed method over existing solutions in related literature.

2021 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION (ICRA 2021) (2021)

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Proceedings Paper Automation & Control Systems

Infrastructure-less Wireless Connectivity for Mobile Robotic Systems in Logistics: Why Bluetooth Mesh Networking is Important?

Adnan Aijaz

Summary: Mobile robots are disrupting the material handling industry, operating in logistics facilities with little infrastructure and requiring low-cost solutions and wireless connectivity. Bluetooth mesh technology, as the latest addition to the IoT landscape, plays a crucial role in addressing the challenges of infrastructure-less connectivity for mobile robotic systems.

2021 26TH IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES AND FACTORY AUTOMATION (ETFA) (2021)

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Proceedings Paper Automation & Control Systems

Learning Connectivity for Data Distribution in Robot Teams

Ekaterina Tolstaya et al.

Summary: This study proposes a decentralized, low-latency method for data distribution in ad-hoc networks using Graph Neural Networks, enabling multi-robot teams to coordinate actions in harsh environments with no existing communication infrastructure. The distributed GNN communication policies are trained via reinforcement learning using the average Age of Information as the reward function, leading to improved training stability and outperforming industry-standard methods for data distribution. The trained policies also generalize well to larger teams of both static and mobile agents.

2021 IEEE/RSJ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS AND SYSTEMS (IROS) (2021)

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Article Computer Science, Information Systems

Automatic Curriculum Design for Object Transportation Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning

Gyuho Eoh et al.

Summary: The paper introduces an automatic curriculum learning method for object transportation based on deep reinforcement learning to address the sparse reward problem. It proposes an adaptive determining method for difficulty levels and training time, achieving higher success rates compared with manual curriculum methods.

IEEE ACCESS (2021)

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Proceedings Paper Engineering, Aerospace

Fully Decentralized Controller for Multi-Robot Collective Transport in Space Applications

Hamed Farivarnejad et al.

Summary: This paper introduces a fully decentralized control strategy for collective payload transport by a team of identical holonomic mobile robots in a microgravity environment, without depending on inter-robot communication. Robots can drive the payload's center of mass to the destination only with the knowledge of the target position. The effectiveness of the controller is validated through theoretical results and MATLAB simulations.

2021 IEEE AEROSPACE CONFERENCE (AEROCONF 2021) (2021)

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Proceedings Paper Computer Science, Hardware & Architecture

UMBRELLA Collaborative Robotics Testbed and IoT Platform

Tim Farnham et al.

Summary: This paper provides details of a collaborative robotics testbed platform that allows for flexible experimentation using different end devices to evaluate algorithms or new practical application scenarios. The platform includes simulator facilities for algorithm validation before deployment, and is based on Docker containers and ROS2 DDS middleware for future sensor or network technology support.

2021 IEEE 18TH ANNUAL CONSUMER COMMUNICATIONS & NETWORKING CONFERENCE (CCNC) (2021)

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Article Information Science & Library Science

Artificial intelligence in E-commerce fulfillment: A case study of resource orchestration at Alibaba's Smart Warehouse

Dan Zhang et al.

Summary: Despite increased interest in artificial intelligence (AI), integrating it into businesses successfully remains challenging. Key AI resources such as data, AI algorithms, and robots must be orchestrated to work with other resources, such as warehouse facilities and existing information systems, to generate strong AI capabilities.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT (2021)

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Article Engineering, Electrical & Electronic

Improving 802.11p for Delivery of Safety-Critical Navigation Information in Robot-to-Robot Communication Networks

Jennifer Gielis et al.

Summary: Improvements to contention-based robot networks using inter-robot navigation information for safer motion control in dense multi-robot environments are proposed. The Crash Risk Prioritization index and dynamic beacon rate control scheme allow for evaluation of network-level changes on robot navigation safety. Co-design and simulation of robotic control algorithms and network protocols provide insights into network-level requirements for V2V systems and inform conclusions about how emerging standards can best serve robot networks.

IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE (2021)

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Article Computer Science, Information Systems

TWINBOT: Autonomous Underwater Cooperative Transportation

Roger Pi et al.

Summary: The paper focuses on the possibility of using a group of cooperating I-AUVs to transport a long pipe underwater, considering various aspects that need to be taken into account in such a scenario.

IEEE ACCESS (2021)

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Article Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence

Optimizing multi-robot communication under bandwidth constraints

Ryan J. Marcotte et al.

AUTONOMOUS ROBOTS (2020)

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Article Chemistry, Analytical

Information Distribution in Multi-Robot Systems: Utility-Based Evaluation Model

Michal Barcis et al.

SENSORS (2020)

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Article Robotics

Fully Distributed Cooperation for Networked Uncertain Mobile Manipulators

Yi Ren et al.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS (2020)

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Article Engineering, Electrical & Electronic

Private 5G The Future of Industrial Wireless

Adnan Aijaz

IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE (2020)

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Article Telecommunications

Collaborative Learning of Communication Routes in Edge-Enabled Multi-Access Vehicular Environment

Celimuge Wu et al.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COGNITIVE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING (2020)

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Proceedings Paper Automation & Control Systems

Lightweight Multi-robot Communication Protocols for Information Synchronization

Murtadha Alsayegh et al.

2020 IEEE/RSJ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS AND SYSTEMS (IROS) (2020)

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Proceedings Paper Automation & Control Systems

An Approach to Reduce Communication for Multi-agent Mapping Applications

Michael E. Kepler et al.

2020 IEEE/RSJ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS AND SYSTEMS (IROS) (2020)

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Article Computer Science, Information Systems

Decentralized Control of Multi-Robot System in Cooperative Object Transportation Using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Lin Zhang et al.

IEEE ACCESS (2020)

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Article Computer Science, Hardware & Architecture

Federated Learning for Vehicular Internet of Things: Recent Advances and Open Issues

Zhaoyang Du et al.

IEEE OPEN JOURNAL OF THE COMPUTER SOCIETY (2020)

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Article Computer Science, Information Systems

Collaborative Multi-Robot Search and Rescue: Planning, Coordination, Perception, and Active Vision

Jorge Pena Queralta et al.

IEEE ACCESS (2020)

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Article Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence

Distributed multi-robot formation control in dynamic environments

Javier Alonso-Mora et al.

AUTONOMOUS ROBOTS (2019)

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Article Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence

Mona: an Affordable Open-Source Mobile Robot for Education and Research

Farshad Arvin et al.

JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT & ROBOTIC SYSTEMS (2019)

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Article Robotics

A Comparison Between Decentralized Local and Global Methods for Connectivity Maintenance of Multi-Robot Networks

Koresh Khateri et al.

IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS (2019)

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Article Computer Science, Information Systems

Routing Protocols for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks: A Survey

Muhammad Yeasir Arafat et al.

IEEE ACCESS (2019)

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Proceedings Paper Automation & Control Systems

Robust Area Coverage with Connectivity Maintenance

Luca Siligardi et al.

2019 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION (ICRA) (2019)

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Review Robotics

Cooperative Object Transport in Multi-Robot Systems: A Review of the State-of-the-Art

Elio Tuci et al.

FRONTIERS IN ROBOTICS AND AI (2018)

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Article Automation & Control Systems

Advanced approaches for multi-robot coordination in logistic scenarios

Alessandro Farinelli et al.

ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS (2017)

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Review Automation & Control Systems

Bio-inspired self-organising multi-robot pattern formation: A review

Hyondong Oh et al.

ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS (2017)

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Proceedings Paper Automation & Control Systems

The Khepera IV Mobile Robot: Performance Evaluation, Sensory Data and Software Toolbox

Jorge M. Soares et al.

ROBOT 2015: SECOND IBERIAN ROBOTICS CONFERENCE: ADVANCES IN ROBOTICS, VOL 1 (2016)

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Article Robotics

Occlusion-Based Cooperative Transport with a Swarm of Miniature Mobile Robots

Jianing Chen et al.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS (2015)

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Article Automation & Control Systems

Kilobot: A low cost robot with scalable operations designed for collective behaviors

Michael Rubenstein et al.

ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS (2014)

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Proceedings Paper Evolutionary Biology

Insect-Inspired Robot Coordination: Foraging and Coverage

Sjriek Alers et al.

ALIFE 2014: THE FOURTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE SYNTHESIS AND SIMULATION OF LIVING SYSTEMS (2014)

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Article Robotics

Adaptive collective decision-making in limited robot swarms without communication

Serge Kernbach et al.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ROBOTICS RESEARCH (2013)

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Article Automation & Control Systems

RoboNetSim: An integrated framework for multi-robot and network simulation

Michal Kudelski et al.

ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS (2013)

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A Survey and Analysis of Multi-Robot Coordination

Zhi Yan et al.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVANCED ROBOTIC SYSTEMS (2013)

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Article Telecommunications

Adoption of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networking Protocols by Networked Robots

Wim Vandenberghe et al.

WIRELESS PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS (2012)

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Article Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence

ARGoS: a modular, parallel, multi-engine simulator for multi-robot systems

Carlo Pinciroli et al.

SWARM INTELLIGENCE (2012)

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Article Engineering, Electrical & Electronic

Graph-Theoretic Connectivity Control of Mobile Robot Networks

Michael M. Zavlanos et al.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE (2011)

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Towards group transport by swarms of robots

Roderich Gross et al.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BIO-INSPIRED COMPUTATION (2009)

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Article Engineering, Electrical & Electronic

Three Engineers, Hundreds of Robots, One Warehouse

Eric Guizzo

IEEE SPECTRUM (2008)

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Article Automation & Control Systems

RoSe - A framework for multicast communication via unreliable networks in multi-robot systems

Alexander Tiderko et al.

ROBOTICS AND AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS (2008)

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Massively multi-robot simulation in stage

Richard Vaughan

Swarm Intelligence (2008)

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Mobility-aware ad hoc routing protocols for networking mobile robot teams

Saumitra M. Das et al.

JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKS (2007)

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USARSim:a robot simulator for research and education

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2007 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION, VOLS 1-10 (2007)

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Multirobot systems: A classification focused on coordination

A Farinelli et al.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS MAN AND CYBERNETICS PART B-CYBERNETICS (2004)

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Multi-Robot Systems and Cooperative Object Transport: Communications, Platforms, and Challenges

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