A framework for large-scale multi-robot teams

Robotic teams comprised of heterogeneous members have many unique capabilities that make them suitable for operation in scenarios that may be hazardous or harmful to humans. The effectiveness of these teams requires that the team members take advantage of the strengths of one another to overcome individual limitations. Some of these strengths and deficiencies come in the form of locomotion, sensing, processing, communication, and available power. Many times larger robots can be used to transport, deploy, and recover smaller deployable robots. There has been some work in the area of marsupial systems, but in general marsupial systems represent teams of two or three robots. The basic design of the majority of marsupial systems does not have the scalability to handle larger-scale teams, which offer increased performance and redundancy in complex scenarios.