Design and Implementation of an autonomous cooperative robot simulator using the OAA agent platform

In this paper we present a multiagent simulator and a coordination scheme for the existing lawn mowing cooperative multi-robot system. Multi-robot systems in the real world are vulnerable to failure of robots and low communication throughput. We need to device a coordination scheme which will overcome these problems. Also, it is preferable for the scheme to adapt to many different situations without any specific precondition. The task allocation and coordination scheme which we propose in this paper is base on Voronoi Diagram. We show that our scheme has flexibility, completeness, robustness, scalability, and proportional properties. We illustrate these properties throughout many different kinds of simulation, such as different initial allocations, change of communication frequency, introduction of robot failure, and change of the number of robots. We have developed the multiagent simulator using OAA Agent Platform. Some advantages and disadvantages of OAA that we found through our design experience are also presented.