Distributed sensing system with 3D model-based agents

In recent years, demand for advanced sensing in robot tasks using multiple sensing modules has increased. A traditional approach for the construction of such a sensing system is to organize the modules using a single and centrally controlled system. However, there are various disadvantages in this approach with respect to flexibility, robustness, extendability, and efficiency in achieving tasks. To overcome these difficulties, decentralized and cooperative control of multirobots is a promising approach. The authors propose a decentralized and cooperative sensing system for robot vision tasks and present a prototype of such a visual sensing system implemented using a multirobot system. It performs visual inspection of water leakage on the sleeve of a valve. In this task, active and cooperative control of cameras and light sources play a very important role. The authors extend the system with 3-D model-based agents which utilize 3-D model information about the task environment for distributed sensor planning