# Peter Stone's Selected Publications

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## A Multi-Robot System for Continuous Area Sweeping Tasks

Mazda Ahmadi and Peter Stone. A Multi-Robot System for Continuous Area Sweeping Tasks. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 1724–1729, May 2006.
Some videos of the robot referenced in the paper.
ICRA 2006

### Abstract

As mobile robots become increasingly autonomous over extended periods of time, opportunities arise for their use on repetitive tasks. We define and implement behaviors for a class of such tasks that we call continuous area sweeping tasks. A continuous area sweeping task is one in which a group of robots must repeatedly visit all points in a fixed area, possibly with non-uniform frequency, as specified by a task-dependent cost function. Examples of problems that need continuous area sweeping are trash removal in a large building and routine surveillance. In our previous work we have introduced a single-robot approach to this problem. In this paper, we extend that approach to multi-robot scenarios. The focus of this paper is adaptive and decentralized task assignment in continuous area sweeping problems, with the aim of ensuring stability in environments with dynamic factors, such as robot malfunctions or the addition of new robots to the team. Our proposed negotiation-based approach is fully implemented and tested both in simulation and on physical robots.

### BibTeX Entry

@InProceedings(ICRA06,
title="A Multi-Robot System for Continuous Area Sweeping Tasks",
booktitle="Proceedings of the {IEEE} International Conference on Robotics and Automation",
pages="1724--1729",
month="May",year="2006",
abstract={As mobile robots become increasingly autonomous over
extended periods of time, opportunities arise for
their use on repetitive tasks. We define and
implement behaviors for a class of such tasks that
we call \emph{continuous area sweeping} tasks. A
continuous area sweeping task is one in which a
group of robots must repeatedly visit all points in
a fixed area, possibly with non-uniform frequency,
as specified by a task-dependent cost
function. Examples of problems that need continuous
area sweeping are trash removal in a large building
and routine surveillance.  In our previous work we
have introduced a single-robot approach to this
problem. In this paper, we extend that approach to
multi-robot scenarios. The focus of this paper is