Multi-robot Cooperative System Research Articles

ROBOT MANZAI: ROBOT CONVERSATION AS A PASSIVE–SOCIAL MEDIUM

This paper reports on the development of a multirobot cooperation system for human–robot communication in which robots behave as if communicating by speech, while the system exchanges information through a network that maintains natural communication timing. The information exchanged through the network is based on the analysis of interhuman conversation. This system is based on a scripting language for coordinating multirobot communication, which has a merit for developers: easy development. The developed system is used for Manzai, which is a kind of a Japanese stand-up comedy mainly performed by two persons. While tempo and timing are particularly important in Manzai, the developed "robot Manzai" system received higher evaluations than the Manzai shown in a video performed by humans. We believe that this system demonstrates the potential of robots as a passive–social medium, including television and computers.

ロボット漫才―社会的受動メディアとしての二体のロボットの利用―

This paper reports on the development of a multi-robot cooperation system for human-robot communication. In the system, robots behave as if they are communicating by speech, while the system exchanges information through a network for keeping the timing of the communication natural. The exchanged information through the network is based on analysis of inter-human conversation. This system is based on a scripting language for coordinating multi-robot communication, which has a merit for developer of easy development. The developed system is used for Manzai, which is a Japanese comedy conversation mainly performed by two people. While the tempo and timing are particularly important in Manzai, the developed “robot Manzai” system was more highly evaluated than the Manzai shown in a video performed by humans. We believe that this system demonstrates the potentials of robots as a passive-social medium; like television and computers.

A FAST AND ROBUST ALGORITHM FOR COLOR-BLOB TRACKING IN MULTI-ROBOT COORDINATED TASKS

In this paper, a fast and robust algorithm is presented for color-blob tracking, which is applicable in a multi-robot cooperative control system. The algorithm, which is immune to uneven illumination, identifies the current poses (positions and orientations) of a robot and the manipulated object (a rectangle box) from a color image, in real time. Two main challenges are faced in the multi-robot task considered in the paper. The first one concerns the response speed of the vision subsystem. The second challenge comes from uneven lighting, which makes it very difficult for the vision subsystem to trace a specific color blob in different positions. A fast computer vision algorithm is presented to cope with these challenges. First, an image in the RGB (Red-Green-Blue) color space is converted into the HSI (Hue-Saturation-Intensity) color space. Then the Saturation and the Intensity components of the image are removed and only the Hue component is retained. Second, filtering and template matching technologies are employed to remove the disturbances from the background and other objects in the image. Finally, coordinate transformations are used to reconstruct the poses of the robot and the object when they are moving. A multi-robot route planning approach is presented, which uses the information acquired by the color-blob tracking algorithm. The experimental results are presented to show the feasibility and the effectiveness of the algorithm.

Coordination of the multi agent system and ITS application to robot soccer

Multi-Agent-System (MAS) consists of a group of agents that can take a specific role within an organizational structure. The coordination of the multi agents is associated with a lot of supplementary work in advance. The robot soccer system is a good technique for multi-robot cooperative autonomous systems, with highly coordinated operations and movements as to fulfil specific objectives, even under adverse situations. Robot soccer system helps to understand and provide with theory and principles for constructing complex systems with multiple agents and their coordination or competition in dynamical environments. On the other side robot soccer is a good tool for the edutainment of technical fields such as mechanical, electrical, software engineering etc. In this article, we introduced the development of the robot soccer system at Mechanical Engineering Faculty. According to the experience with the students the robot soccer is very good tool for the education of different engineering as well as technical subjects. They can study and perfect their knowledge on simulator application and its real time application to robot soccer that can enable to implement their own ideas, in particularly.

Multi-Agent Systems: A Survey from the Robot-Soccer Perspective

ABSTRACTOne of the most challenging goals in artificial intelligence (AI) is the development of artificial intelligent autonomous agents with human-level performance. The past few years has witnessed a tremendous interest in research and discussions on intelligent agents. With the ever increasing number of robots in an industrial environment, scientists and technologists are often faced with issues on cooperation and coordination among different robots and their self governance in a common work-space. This has led to developments in multi-robot cooperative autonomous systems. With an aim to study issues such as group architecture, resource conflict, origin of cooperation, learning and geometric problems, groups of robots are constructed. The proponents of multi-robot autonomous systems needed a model to validate the theories being proposed and to test their efficacy and efficiency. It is no surprise that they started focussing on robot soccer. Robot soccer makes heavy demands in all the key areas of robot...