Weight Parameters Tuning for Frontier-based Cooperating Robots Exploration

In this paper, a frontier-based technique is used with two cooperating mobile robots to explore unknown environment. The aim is to decrease the exploration time. The proposed frontier-based exploration algorithm is based on a new bidding function in which we introduced a special parameter to decrease the overlap between the robots in addition to the utility and cost parameters. Tens of thousands experiments have been conducted to see the relative importance of the weight parameters used in this technique. As a result of these experiments, the weight values can be chosen to guarantee short exploration time. The proposed algorithm has been tested with a set of environments with different shapes and different numbers of obstacles. Finally, the results of our algorithm were compared with the results of one of known exploration algorithms available in the literature. The new technique led to promising results. Key-Words: Multi-robot, Cooperating robots, Exploration, Map building, Weight, Frontier.