Robots Play NiceRobots Play Nice

Think it's tough to get a team of humans here on Earth to work together effectively to complete a project? Try managing a team of robots a planet away. That's the challenge faced by Paul Schenker, supervisor of the mechanical and robotics technologies group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Two of the lab's robots, working outdoors in a test that simulated the deployment of a solar power station, recently managed to autonomously approach, grip, and carry an 8-foot container for more than 164 feet. Schenker says it's the first time two highly agile robots cooperated and transported an extended, coupled object over natural terrain.

His secret weapon is a software architecture dubbed CampOut (Control Architecture for Multirobot Planetary Outposts), which lets a team of robots jointly detect and track their progress toward a goal and coordinate actions in uncertain environments. Schenker and his team created CampOut, which enables any number of robots, each armed with its own basic visual, motor, and "intelligence" skills, to detect and carry objects and work together as a team. Networked robotics lets robots view each other as extended resources, Schenker says. The software alerts the robots if there's too much weight shift in one direction, and they adjust accordingly.

The laboratory started the project in anticipation of the potential challenges robots would face on Martian soil. "You need a team of robots that are extensible and flexible," Schenker says.

The robots communicate with wireless modems to exchange information about their current activities. The idea, Schenker says, is to have each robot understand that they're carrying a certain amount of weight, know which direction to take an object, and see and adjust as a group to obstacles, such as a change in terrain.

The ultimate goal for the robots is to serve as advance exploration teams on Mars. Schenker envisions teams of robots going to places and establishing "sustained robotic outposts." They also could act as a construction crew for a space station.