Simultaneous Exploration and Information Delivery Using Multiple Heterogeneous Robots Under Limited Communication

Rescue vehicles accidentally driving into non-traversable terrains increase the risk of delays during disaster response. This paper investigates the problem of coordinating heterogeneous robots to find traversable regions for rescue vehicles under limited communication constraint. The communication range is strictly limited such that no inter-robot communication is possible outside the range. The proposed coordination strategy is called Simultaneous Exploration And Information Delivery (SEAID) strategy and is implemented as a centralised planner. The results demonstrate that SEAID planner completely explores and discovers all the traversable and non-traversable regions to guide rescue vehicles. It also provides regular updates to the base station on the current status of exploration and traversable terrains discovered which is particularly useful during rescue operations.