Exploration with Two Cooperating Mobile Robots

In this paper a new exploration algorithm using two cooperating robots is introduced. The new technique is a combination of wall-following exploration algorithm and frontier-based exploration algorithm. Furthermore, robots sweep the line-of-sight between them continuously; if they can see each other then the area between them is assigned as free. The aim is to decrease the exploration time and energy consumption. The proposed algorithm is divided into two stages: Firstly, one of the robots follows (detects) the entire of the environment walls. And secondly, they employ frontier-based algorithm to complete exploring the remained unexplored areas. During these two stages, the robots sweep the line-of-sight between them in each step to maximize the exploration efficiency.