A Rapid Hunting Algorithm for Multi Mobile Robots System

To decrease the times of dynamic path planning and increase the hunting speed, a concept of "Virtual Range" has been presented for a multi mobile robots system to hunt a moving target in the outdoor environment. Firstly, the path planning of a single robot based on the potential grid method is discussed in a grid map of the outdoor environment, which is established by using the SQL server database. Furthermore, the "Dead Point" problem of the potential grid method is analyzed and resolved. The regular polygon surrounding strategy is the final object to be cooperatively fulfilled by the multi mobile robots. To realize an obvious hunting time reduction, the "Virtual Range" is used as a criterion to trigger the change of the robots\´ states. An actual multi mobile robots system based on wireless LAN has been used to validate the algorithm. The test results show that a reasonable "Virtual Range" can shorten the surrounding time, and there is a shortest hunting time "Virtual Range" for a certain multi mobile robot system.