Many Robots Make Short Work

Indoor mobile robots are becoming reliable enough in navigation tasks to consider working with teams of robots. SHAKEY (remember the STRIPS planner?) In the Office Navigation event, a robot starts from the director's office, determines which of two conference rooms is empty, notifies two professors where and when the meeting will be held, and then returns to tell the director. Points are awarded for accomplishing the different parts of the task, communicating effectively about its goals, and finishing the task quickly. Our strategy was simple: Use as many robots as we could to cut down on the time to find the rooms and notify the professors.