A Method of Generalization of State Space Construction for Multirobots with Different Sensor Configurations

The goal of this study is to develop heterogeneous mobile robots, which realize cooperative actions to accomplish each task in an environment. An important part of achieving the goal is that the agent controlling the robots can realize suitable state space automatically. In particular, domestic robots equipped with low‐cost, discrete simple range sensors have difficulties in the efficient learning of environment because the deviation of sensor configuration in each robot causes serious problems in which the learning policies cannot be shared among them. To overcome this problem, a new method of constructing effective state space with low dependence on sensor configurations is conducted. The method consists of two parts: (i) ing surrounding environment by rectangles, and (ii) generalization of state space by classifying with self organization map (SOM). Simulation experiments show that the state space that has been constructed by an agent with 10 sensors can be reused for the agent with another sensor configuration. © 2008 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.