This project implements an n-member team of autonomous and cooperative sentry robots who maintain security in a physical environment by engaging in activities such as patrolling, inspecting, guarding, and intruder neutralization. Autonomy and cooperation are achieved by delegating functionality out to a diverse community of intelligent agents working towards the common goal of a secure environment yet, especially in the case of the robots, each agent functions independently; agents decide for themselves what actions to take and will continue to do so, even in the event that the community of agents is lost. Agent roles include strategic coordination, data management, and robot control.

This project touches on many programming subjects: AI Robotics, intelligent controllers, agent design, inter-agent communication, and some GUI work to name the major ones. Two Pioneer mobile robots with vision system and sonar sensors will be used. Agent coding uses SRI’s Open Agent Architecture (OAA) and robot control uses SRI’s Saphira.

Shown above is the basic design of the agent and how the agent community will be formed following SRI’s OAA. The agents are themselves made up of specific functionality for doing tasks ranging from decision making (in the Logic and Design modules) to handling requests from other agents.