Multiagent Teleautonomous Behavioral Control

Abstract

Multiagent schema-based reactive robotic systems are complemented with the addition of a new behavior controlled by a human operator. This enables the whole society to be affected as a group rather than forcing the operator to control each agent individually. The operator is viewed by the reactive control system as another behavior exerting his/her influence on the society as a whole. The operator can also control the overall personality of the robot group. Simulation results are presented for foraging, vacuuming, and herding tasks. Results on real robots are presented for manuevering robots out of a box canyon and squeezing robots through a small space. Teleautonomous operation of multiagent reactive systems was demonstrated to be significantly useful for some tasks, less so for others.