Automatic Formation Deployment of Decentralized Heterogeneous Multiple-Robot Networks with Limited Sensing Capabilities

©2009 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.Presented at the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 12-17 May 2009, Kobe, Japan.DOI: 10.1109/ROBOT.2009.5152517Heterogeneous multi-robot networks require novel tools for applications that require achieving and maintaining formations. This is the case for distributing sensing devices with heterogeneous mobile sensor networks. Here, we consider a heterogeneous multi-robot network of mobile robots. The robots have a limited range in which they can estimate the relative position of other network members. The network is also heterogeneous in that only a subset of robots have localization ability. We develop a method for automatically configuring the heterogeneous network to deploy a desired formation at a desired location. This method guarantees that network members without localization are deployed to the correct location in the environment for the sensor placemen