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We describe the design and experimental validation of a large heterogeneous mobile robot team built for the DARPA Software for Distributed Robotics (SDR) program. The core challenge for the SDR program was to develop a multi-robot system capable of carrying out a specific mission: to deploy a large number of robots into an unexplored building, map the building interior, detect and track intruders, and transmit all of the above information to a remote operator. To satisfy these requirements, we developed a heterogeneous robot team consisting of approximately 80 robots. We sketch the key technical elements of this team, focusing on the novel aspects, and present selected results from supervised experiments conducted in a 600 m 2 indoor environment.
Howard et al. (2006) studied this question.