Collective searching algorithm for multi-robot system with bounded communication range

It is very difficult to acquire information of all robot states in real applications due to the limited range of wireless communication. Therefore, many researchers have attempted to implement collective robots without communication each other. However, there are two demerits in the collective systems; one is their poor efficiency and the other is that the systems are irresponsible to various events which may be invoked in searching applications. Therefore in this paper we propose a method to improve productivity collective robots and improve response capability to events so that robots are able to communicate with each other within a limited distance. For the purpose, we develop collective robots´ behaviors which can complete a searching mission under unknown environment and we propose a rule by which the robots share their local maps and path plans. Finally, efficiency of the proposed method is verified by simulation results.