Effectiveness of optimal maintenance strategy in fault-tolerant multi-robot systems

Abstract

This paper focuses on the effectiveness of maintenance in fault-tolerant multi-robot systems. The multi-robot system intended in this paper is completely parallel. That is to say, the system is enabled to work as long as one robot works. For this system, it is required to ensure fault tolerance and keep high performance taking robot failure and maintenance, such as prevention and correction of robots, into account. Therefore, we propose an optimal maintenance strategy on the basis of reliability engineering. This strategy enables robots to undergo preventive maintenance at an optimal interval and corrective maintenance each time they fail. Consequently, the number of robots undergoing maintenance or its effect on the system performance is minimized. Through simulation experiments, the effectiveness of the optimal maintenance strategy for the higher system performance is shown. In addition, the influence of robots undergoing maintenance on the system performance is mathematically and experimentally discussed on the basis of the number of robots used and maintenance strategies. © 2011 The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.