A multi-agent approach to environment exploration

Exploration is a central issue for autonomous agents which must carry out navigation tasks in environments of which a description is not known a priori. In our approach the environment is described, from a symbolic point of view, by means of a graph; clustering techniques allow for further levels of abstraction to be defined, leading to a multi-layered representation. In this work we propose an unsupervised exploration algorithm in which several agents cooperate to acquire knowledge of the environment at the different abstraction levels. All agents are equal and pursue the same local exploration strategy; nevertheless, the existence of multiple levels of abstraction in the environment representation allows for the agents' behavior to differ. Agents carry out exploration at different abstraction levels, aimed at reproducing an ideal exploration profile; each agent dynamically selects its exploration level, based on the current demand. Inter-agent communication allows for the agents to share their knowledge and to record acquaintances of the other agents. A communication protocol for organizing teams of agents is provided. © World Scientific Publishing Company.