An Introductory Investigation of Collaborative Conveyance Method for Multi-Robot Telexistence

In response to the challenges of a dwindling work-force and occupational hazards, the need for robotic systems capable of replacing human tasks is increasing. One proposed solution is the telexistence system. However, required human resources still needs to be improved in telexistence robot system. Efforts to enable a single operator to control multiple robots simultaneously have been undertaken, but this approach presents a high cognitive load, and its practicality needs additional improvement. Consequently, we suggest a strategy where only a single robot is remotely managed by one operator while the remaining robots function autonomously. A key issue within this system is facilitating cooperation between the human-operated robot and the autonomous ones. In this study, we introduce a collaborative conveyance method as a application of this cooperative system, in both cases where information sharing among robots are poossible or not. We confirmed the effectiveness of our method through simulation experiments.