HAMR: A Hybrid Multi-Robot Control Architecture

Highly capable multiple robot architectures often resort to micromanagement to provide enhanced cooperative abilities, sacrificing individual autonomy. Conversely, multi-robot architectures that maintain individual autonomy are often limited in their cooperative abilities. This article presents a modified three layer architecture that solves both of these issues. The addition of a Coordinator layer to a three-layered approach provides a platform-independent interface for coordination on tasks and takes advantage of individual autonomy to improve coordination capabilities. This reduces communication overhead versus many multi-robot architecture designs and allows for more straightforward resizing of the robot collective and increased individual autonomy.