This paper deals with the Multi-robot Exploration (MRE) under communication constraints problem. We propose a novel intermittent rendezvous method that allows robots to explore an unknown environment while sharing maps at rendezvous locations through agreements. In our method, robots update the agreements to spread the rendezvous locations during the exploration and prioritize exploring unknown areas near them. To generate the agreements automatically, we reduced the MRE to instances of the Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP) and ensured intermittent communication through a temporal connectivity graph. We evaluate our method in simulation in various virtual urban environments and a Gazebo simulation using the Robot Operating System (ROS). Our results suggest that our method can be better than using relays or maintaining intermittent communication with a base station since we can explore faster without additional hardware to create a relay network.

翻译：本文研究了通信约束下的多机器人探索（MRE）问题。我们提出了一种新颖的间歇性会合方法，使机器人能够在未知环境中进行探索，同时通过协商在会合点共享地图。在该方法中，机器人通过更新协商来在探索过程中散布会合点，并优先探索会合点附近的未知区域。为自动生成协商，我们将MRE问题归约为作业车间调度问题（JSSP）的实例，并通过时间连通性图确保间歇性通信。我们在多种虚拟城市环境中进行了仿真评估，并在使用机器人操作系统（ROS）的Gazebo仿真环境中进行了验证。结果表明，与使用中继或维持与基站的间歇性通信相比，我们的方法无需额外硬件构建中继网络即可实现更快的探索速度。