
Preface
This report describes a distributed control system for a mobile
robot that operates in an unmodified office environment
occupied by moving people. The robot's controller is composed
of over 40 separate processes that run on a loosely connected
network of 24 processors. Together this ensemble helps the
robot locate empty soda cans, collect them with its arm, and
bring them back home. A multi-agent system such as this has
many advantages over classic monolithic controllers. For
instance, it can be developed in stages, each new layer building
on the last. It can also be split among several processors or
agents so, as new capabilities ar ...