Researchers from the MIT have developed a system that allows multiple robots to communicate and collaborate in real time. According to their recent article, “writing a program to control a single autonomous robot navigating an uncertain environment with an erratic communication link is hard enough; write one for multiple robots that may or may not have to work in tandem, depending on the task, is even harder.” The system handles uncertainty in the real world by triage; it takes three inputs and uses them to determine how the system as a whole should behave. The systems are low-level control algorithms that govern agents’ behaviors collectively or individually, stats about those programs’ execution in a particular environment, and a scheme for valuing different outcomes that takes into account success and penalizes using energy without accomplishing the task. The robots can “make decisions” using the data gathered, and then take actions to achieve the pre-determined goal. Read more at:
Source: MIT News
