Decentralized cooperative control - A multivehicle platform for research in networked embedded systems

Recent advances in communication, computation, and embedded technologies support the development of cooperative multivehicle systems. For the purposes of this article, we adopt the following definition of cooperative behavior: "Given some task specified by a designer, a multiple-robot system displays cooperative behavior if, due to some underlying mechanism, for instance, the 'mechanism of cooperation,' there is an increase in the total utility of the system." The development of cooperative multivehicle systems is motivated by the recognition that, by distributing computer power and other resources, teams of mobile agents can perform many tasks more efficiently and robustly than an individual robot. For example, teams of robots can complete tasks such as multipoint surveillance, distributed localization and mapping, and cooperative transport. To facilitate the development of cooperative control systems and mobile sensor networks, we have created a cooperative multivehicle testbed (COMET) for research and experimentation.