A distributed approach for road clearance with multi-robot in urban search and rescue environment

In urban search and rescue domains, robots explore the affected terrain to search and assist disaster victims. RoboCup Rescue simulation provides a platform for disaster management where heterogeneous field agents (fire-brigade agent, ambulance agent, and police force agent) collaborate to manage a mimicked calamity situation. The role of police force agents is crucial, as they clear the blocked roads to allow other agents to perform their tasks. In this paper we suggest a distributed multi-robot coordination approach for clearing a road blocked with heavy obstacles. The proposed framework is implemented and simulated in ARGoS, a multi-robot simulator. The experimental results show the validity and satisfactory performance of the proposed approach.