Cooperation in heterogeneous groups of autonomous robots

By increasing complexity of tasks, autonomous outdoor robots emerge from single beings into cooperating groups. This paper first introduces the robots developed at the University of Siegen and then discusses the architecture and communication structure that is able to glue these into a group working on a common task while exploiting their different abilities. The paper describes a new software system that universally connects quite different robots into one group. Based on VSAL middle ware and ROS the CAPTAIN architecture implements complex missions via hierarchic state machines and an appropriate control scheme. This system is verified experimentally by using it in several different groups of robots.