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汇合方法，允许机器人在未知环境中探索，同时通过协议在汇合位置共享地图。在我们的方法中，机器人更新协议以在探索过程中扩散汇合位置，并优先探索其附近未知区域。为实现协议的自动生成，我们将MRE问题规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通信。我们在多种虚拟城市环境和基于机器人操作系统（ROS）的Gazebo仿真中评估了该方法。结果表明，与使用中继或与基站保持间歇通信相比，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。