Deployer: A Robot-Deploying Robot.

摘要

This report documents a program to develop techniques for launching and controlling heterogeneous teams of robots. The key goal is to combine the physical and computational power of a large, sophisticated robot (the Deployer) with the robustness and flexibility of a swarm of distributed microrobots. Under this program, iRobot developed proof-of-concept systems for two objectives. The first objective is the ability to strategically emplace microbots and microsensors. A high mobility platform (the iRobot Urban Robot) is equipped to launch grenade-sized robot mock-ups through 1st, 2nd, and 3rd story windows in urban terrain. The second objective is the ability to command and control the robots once emplaced. This task includes coordinating among the heterogeneous robots to extend the capability of each type, providing the operator with distributed remote presence at a minimized cognitive load, and intelligently collecting, filtering, and presenting a coherent view of the data.