Simulating actions and perception of autonomous mobile robots in a multi-agent indoor environment

The goal of the GOFER project is to control the operation of many mobile robots in an indoor environment in order to automate a variety of tasks. This project raises many research issues: man-robot and robot-robot communication systems and protocols, implementation of non-conflicting sensor systems, task-adapted strategy in the use of sensors, sensor fusion, contingency-tolerant motion control, multi-robot motion planning, multi-robot task planning and scheduling. The purpose of the paper is to focus on the integration of software dealing with various aspects of the overall problem. The paper presents a general simulation tool designed to package such software, and to evaluate and compare methods that solve some of the specific problems mentioned above in an unpredictable environment