A Distributed and Monitoring Infrastructure for Distributed Mobile Robots (DiMoRo)

13.06.2005

Abstract
The DiMoRo system is a prototype of a cooperative multi robot system (MRS). The system allows users to control and monitor different heterogeneous robots in a collaborative environment. The user controls the robots by assigning them tasks and monitors them to see the results of the tasks and other relevant information. The system runs on a flexible architecture that allows new robots and users to easy detect and connect to the system.

The motivation behind this thesis is to facilitate further MRS research and to gain hands-on experience. This thesis has also targeted two concepts that are more seldom to be found implemented in MRS systems. The first concept is to use a shared memory as the message passing structure that provides the only communication in the system. The second concept is to allow different robot types to work together in one system. The last in particular is a very difficult issue, because the robots have different interfaces and applications. The system has also implemented solutions for other concepts such as task allocation, division of labour, resource sharing, and coordination between the processes sharing the memory space.

The application domain has been decided to be in a household environment. The reason for this decision was that the application domain had to be limited, and because this puts the system inside an environment that is easier to control. If no particular application domain had been chosen, it would have been very difficult to make any decisions at all, as different solutions works best under different circumstances.

The system consists of three participants, which are users, robots, and the core system. The users communicate with the system through a graphical user interface. The robots communicate by running the robot application, and the core system is the link betweenn these.