Extending the Player Project for flexible cooperation of multiple robots

Flexible communication and coordination are required for multi-robot systems to cope with dynamic environments and tasks. Extensions of the Player Project are proposed in this paper to facilitate multi-robot systems with practical methods for flexible communication and coordination. A concept of Player Layer is presented in order to enhance the information sharing among robots. Coordinator modules are introduced to replace the original control clients, acting as the core of control and coordination. Novel coordination tools including work mode, resource list and situation description are proposed for the planning and decision-making among the coordinators. Key steps of switching between cooperation patterns include situation analysis, trigger event and mode transition. Modular design of the control and processing programs ensures the scalability and flexibility of the proposed endeavor. An illustrative scenario is presented to investigate the feasibility of these extensions for robots´ flexible cooperation.