A New Triple-Based Multi-robot System Architecture and Application in Soccer Robots

Abstract

Inspired by the organizational structures of some biological communities and social activities, a new multi-robot system architecture is proposed after the structure of multi-robot system being modeled as a triple τ = (I,G, S), which consists of the Integrated characters I, the Group characters G and the Single charters S. The proposed system architecture is divided into Integrated Intelligent Layer IIL, Group Intelligent Layer GIL and Single Intelligent Layer SIL sequentially. And then the information flow, the control flow and the response to dynamic environment are all analyzed. At last we report detailedly the application of proposed system architecture in NuBot team, a RoboCup Middle-Size League soccer robots team. In the view of triple-based system architecture, we designed different layers specially by imitating human soccer team naturally. This application, which has been run successfully for three years and is still developing, shows that the proposed triple-based system architecture is adaptable with distinct information/control flow, perfect compatibility and excellent flexibility in dynamic environment.