MoRoCo: Multi-operator-robot Coordination, Interaction and Exploration under Scarce Communicationn

Zhuoli Tian, Yuyang Zhang, Jinsheng Wei, Meng Guo
College of Engineering, Peking University
2025
Paper arXiv
MY ALT TEXT

Illustration of the considered scenario, where multiple operators and robots are deployed in an unknown and communication-scarce environment for exploration and task execution. (A): Within one team (one operator, one UGV and one mobile manipulator), the robots coordinate via intra-team intermittent communication to actively explore the environment, while ensuring a timely feedback to the operator with a maximum latency, in the proposed “spread mode”; (B): The operator can move in the environment without losing connection with the team via the proposed interaction protocol, or as a team via the proposed “migrate mode”; (C): For remote requests that require high-bandwidth (such as inspection and remote control), the robots form a communication chain to stream real-time video to the operator via the proposed “chain mode”; (D): Robots from different teams act as temporary messengers for inter-team data exchange under a latency bound, to achieve efficient coordination.

Abstract

Fleets of autonomous robots are increasingly deployed alongside multiple human operators to explore unknown environments, identify salient features, and carry out complex tasks in scenarios such as subterranean exploration, reconnaissance, and search-and-rescue missions. In these contexts, communication is often severely limited to short-range exchanges via ad-hoc networks, posing challenges to coordination. While recent studies have addressed multi-robot exploration under communication constraints, they largely overlook the essential role of human operators and their real-time interaction with robotic teams. Operators may demand timely updates on exploration progress and robot status, reprioritize or cancel tasks dynamically, or request live video feeds and control access. Conversely, robots may seek human confirmation for anomalous events or require help recovering from motion or planning failures. To enable such two-way, context-aware interactions under restricted communication, we propose MoRoCo, a unified framework for online coordination and exploration in multi-operator, multi-robot systems. MoRoCo enables the team to adaptively switch among three coordination modes: spread mode for parallelized exploration with intermittent data sharing, migrate mode for coordinated relocation, and chain mode for maintaining high-bandwidth connectivity through multi-hop links. These transitions are managed through fully distributed algorithms using only local communication. Extensive large-scale human-in-the-loop simulations and real-world hardware experiments validate the necessity of incorporating human-robot interaction and demonstrate that MoRoCo enables efficient, reliable coordination under communication-limited conditions, marking a significant step toward robust human-in-the-loop autonomy in challenging environments.

Overall Framework

MY ALT TEXT

Illustration of the proposed framework MoRoCo, for the coordination, supervision and interaction of multi-operator multi-robot systems that operate in unknown environments under scarce communication. Bilateral and multi-modal interactions during exploration are explicitly modeled including 7 types of operator-robot and operator-operator requests. Three operation modes as “spread, migrate and chain” modes are designed to facilitate the distributed communication and the fulfillment of these requests.

BibTeX

@misc{tian2025morocomultioperatorrobotcoordinationinteraction,
      title={MoRoCo: Multi-operator-robot Coordination, Interaction and Exploration under Restricted Communication}, 
      author={Zhuoli Tian and Yuyang Zhang and Jinsheng Wei and Meng Guo},
      year={2025},
      eprint={2508.07657},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.RO},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07657}, 
      }