Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in
 Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science

 MULTIPLE VEHICLE POSITIONING SIMULATION AND OPTIMIZATION

 By

 Erica Frances Zawodny

 May 2003


Chair: Carl D. Crane, III
Major Department: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

 There is a wealth of research being performed in the area of autonomous vehicles.

Much of the research involves development of platforms and integration of computers

and various sensors to create an intelligent robot. With the development of multiple

robotic agents comes an interest in multiple robot interaction. There are two limiting

factors with this type of research: robot cost and robot size. Therefore, much of the

research is performed in simulation initially and later implemented on actual systems.

 In order to optimally place robots throughout a region an algorithm should first be

developed and tested in simulation. Related work has been done on optimal placement of

sonar beacons throughout a region for a beacon based navigation system.

 There are several issues that need to be addressed when positioning multiple robots.

The number of robots to be placed, the size of the region, the obstacle locations within

the region, and sensor limitations are all important issues that are addressed in the

solution of this problem. In addition, the optimization technique chosen will have