Intelligent Sensor Integration and Management with Cooperative, Heterogeneous Mobile Robots

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The two-robot entry from the University of South Florida received a Technical Innovation Award for Conceptual and Artistic Design in the Hors d'Oeurves Anyone? event of the 1999 AAAI Mobile Robot Competition. The entry was fielded by a team of seven students from the Computer Science and Engineering and Art departments. Three of the team members were undergraduates. The robots were unique in their approach to maximizing the time the robot was engaged in serving: one robot acted as the server, who would call the second robot to bring refills as needed. This allowed the entry to creatively exploit the differences in sensors on the two robots. The entry was also novel in its application of multi-sensor integration within a hybrid deliberative/reactive architecture. Five sensor modalities were used (vision, thermal, range, sonar, and tactile). Behavioral sensor fusion was used for five reactive behaviors in eight states, significantly improving performance.