In this paper, we present coordination algorithms for an heterogeneous robotic group consisting of a mobile manipulator and a number of mobile sensing agents to cooperatively estimate a toxic field and trace its maximum point. In particular, we treat the mobile manipulator as a master machine and mobile sensing agents as slave machines such that, at the converged configuration, the end effector of the manipulator can reach the maximum point. The unknown field has been modeled by a network of radial basis functions and mobile robots are coordinated by flocking and gradient control algorithms based on their estimated fields. A simulation study demonstrates the validity of the proposed scheme in an industrial disaster or emergency scenario.

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