Overview
We develop a cooperative operation technique for heterogeneous multi-robot teaming, enabling wide-area autonomous missions across diverse environments. Heterogeneous platforms with distinct mobility characteristics such as drones and ground robots each perform multimodal sensor-based SLAM, and the extracted 3D geometry (PCD), optical (RGB), and thermal (Temperature) features are matched via a triangular structure to establish a common representation across platforms. This integrates distributed observations from individual platforms into a unified coordinate frame, generating a multi-dimensional shared map and overcoming the perceptual range and environmental constraints of a single platform.
Key contribution
▸ Multimodal feature extraction: Matching PCD, RGB, and temperature features via a triangular structure for consistent cross-platform representation
▸ Heterogeneous multi-robot teaming: Integrating observations from aerial and ground platforms for cooperative wide-area perception
▸ Multi-dimensional shared map: Fusing distributed observations into a unified coordinate frame for integrated mapping and real-time sharing
Impact
▸ Wide-area mission capability: Expanding coverage and reducing mission time via multi-platform operation
▸ Improved perception reliability: Enhancing localization and mapping accuracy through complementary sensors and viewpoints
▸ Enhanced operational robustness: Sustaining missions despite partial platform loss through a distributed structure
▸ Scalability: Establishing a general-purpose framework adaptable to platform type and quantity