A challenge in Multi-Robot Exploration (MRE) tasks is formulating efficient distributed exploration strategies since, in general, robots cannot communicate freely and the environment can be dynamic and unknown. Most solutions deliver good performance at the cost of adding more robots or network relays while exploring, which helps to connect the robots through time. This paper proposes a novel intermittent rendezvous method that allows robots to explore an unknown environment while sharing maps at rendezvous points without adding relays or other robots. We propose dynamically updating the rendezvous locations throughout the exploration and designing an exploration strategy that prioritizes future rendezvous. We generate our rendezvous strategies automatically by reducing the MRE to instances of the Job Shop Schedule Problem (JSSP) with temporal connectivity graphs. We evaluate our method in simulation in various virtual urban environments and in 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：多机器人探索任务中的一个挑战是在机器人无法自由通信且环境动态未知的情况下，制定高效的分布式探索策略。现有解决方案大多通过增加机器人数量或部署网络中继来提升性能，以此维持机器人间的持续连接。本文提出一种新颖的间歇性会合方法，允许机器人在不增设中继或额外机器人的情况下探索未知环境，并在会合点共享地图。我们提出动态更新探索过程中的会合位置，并设计优先考虑未来会合的探索策略。通过将多机器人探索问题简化为具有时间连通图的作业车间调度问题实例，自动生成会合策略。我们在多种虚拟城市场景以及基于机器人操作系统的Gazebo仿真环境中评估了该方法。结果表明，该方法相较于使用中继或与基站保持间歇通信的方案更具优势，可在无需额外硬件构建中继网络的情况下实现更快的探索速度。