Journal Papers

Enhancing Multi-Robot Exploration Using Probabilistic Frontier Prioritization with Dirichlet Process Gaussian Mixtures

JohnLewisDevassy | Meysam Basiri | Mario Figueiredo | Pedro Lima
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
pages:
pp. 1-8
DOI:
10.1109/LRA.2026.3703222
Abstract
Multi-agent autonomous exploration is essential for applications such as environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and industrial-scale surveillance. However, effective coordination under communication constraints remains a significant challenge. Frontier exploration algorithms analyze the boundary between the known and unknown regions to determine the next-best view that maximizes exploratory gain. This article proposes an enhancement to existing frontier-based exploration algorithms by introducing a probabilistic approach to frontier prioritization. By leveraging Dirichlet process Gaussian mixture model (DP-GMM) and a probabilistic formulation of information gain, the method improves the quality of frontier prioritization. The proposed enhancement, integrated into two state-of-the-art multi-agent exploration algorithms, consistently improves performance across environments of varying clutter, communication constraints, and team sizes. Simulations showcase an average exploration time improvement of 10% and 14% for the two algorithms across all combinations. Successful deployment in real-world experiments with a dual-drone system further corroborates these findings.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

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