Including communication success in the estimation of information gain for multi-robot exploration

This article investigates the effect of incorporating knowledge about the communication possibilities in an exploration algorithm used to map an unknown environment. The mission is to explore a hypothetical disaster site with a small team of robots. The challenge faced by the robot team is to coordinate their actions such that they efficiently explore the environment in their search for victims. The coordination can only be optimal when the robots share the same map. With a limited communication range the map cannot be shared in all circumstances. This article concentrates on the effect of a distributed map, where each robot has only has knowledge of a part of the global map and has no guaranteed connection to the other robot or the operator.