ABSTRACT

Altenburg, Karl Ralph, M.S., General Science Program, Department of Computer Science, College of Science and Mathematics, North Dakota State University, April 1995. COCOBOTS: Robots, Ants, and Randomness. Major Professor: Dr. Mark Pavicic.

COCOBOTS is a realization of multiple autonomous mobile robots. COCOBOTS is an acronym for Cooperative and Collective Robotic System. In this study, COCBOTS serves as research tool for investigating the decentralized control of many robots in the presence and absence of inter-robot communication. COBOBOTS is also a design model for the implementation of affordable, programmable, and task-flexible mobile robots for use in research, education, and commerce. LEGO Technic construction elements combined with programmable microcontrollers proved to be a flexible, effective material for the design and implementation of affordable research robots. Random walk searching coupled with obstacle detection is an effective, computationally simple, and scalable navigation scheme that is robust and fault tolerant in dynamic, uncertain environments. Localized broadcast communication can be used in various ways to increase the overall effectiveness of cooperative robots with minimal additional system complexity. Communication permits robot resource allocation, task allocation, and localized recruitment.