Exploration of Multiple Unknown Areas by Swarm of Robots Utilizing Virtual-Region-Based Splitting and Merging Technique

This paper describes an efficacious virtual-region-based shape control scheme for exploring an unknown occluded dynamic environment, likely to have multiple targets, by a swarm of robots. The traditional leader-follower strategy has been intertwined with the shape control technique to achieve group-splitting of the robotic swarm in multi-target or multi-path scenarios. If multiple passages are detected by the parent swarm during the navigational process, several sub-swarms with proportionate agents will be created for progressing through these separate paths. The splitting philosophy is dependent on the fitment of the virtual elliptical regions in each of the paths found ahead, which will guide their respective sub-swarms to navigate further. This work, subsequently, conceives a realistic condition where two or more pathways merge to form a single lane, leading to a unique target. In such situations, the sub-swarms (operating in those paths) rejoin and proceed to the goal as a unified unit. Therefore, in this work, two different features of a swarm robotics framework, namely splitting and merging, have been studied. The scalability control plan ensures strict cohesiveness amongst the agents (inside the mother swarm or any sub-swarm) during the exploration steps. To substantiate the efficacy of the proposed technique, simulation results along with hardware experiment are duly furnished in this article. Note to Practitioners—In recent years, autonomous robots have played an increasingly significant role in civil applications. The search and rescue operation is one such example. In this specific field, swarm robotic systems have the potential to significantly improve efficiency with faster search and rescue of victims, initial assessment and mapping of the environment, real-time monitoring, and surveillance operations. Motivated from this specification, in this work, we offer a novel trajectory planning technique for a robotic swarm employing the region-based shape control scheme with the leader-follower approach for achieving the splitting and merging. The proposed solution can be used in any kind of environmental circumstance, such as single or multiple targets, single or multiple pathways, and so on, such as a normal rescue operation in which several victims may be found in different locations. Moreover, to undertake complete surveillance, it would be cost-effective to deploy one large swarm and then split it into sub-swarms based on the requirements.