MacKunis, William Thomas.

Multi-agent control is a very promising area of robotics. In applications for which it is difficult or impossible for humans to intervene, the utilization of multi-agent, autonomous robot groups is indispensable. This thesis presents a novel approach to reactive multi-agent control that is practical and elegant in its simplicity. The basic idea upon which this approach is based is that a group of robots can cooperate to determine the shortest path through a previously unmapped environment by virtue of redundant sharing of simple data between multiple agents. The idea was implemented with two robots. In simulation, it was tested with over sixty agents. The results clearly show that the shortest path through various environments emerges as a result of redundant sharing of information between agents. In addition, this approach exhibits safeguarding techniques that reduce the risk to robot agents working in unknown and possibly hazardous environments. Further, the simplicity of this approach makes implementation very practical and easily expandable to reliably control a group comprised of many agents.