An analysis of cooperative repair capabilities in a team of robots

To date, very little work has investigated the benefits of repairable robots. Robots that can repair themselves and other robots in their team are intuitively a superior design. Intuition, however, is not an acceptable basis for spending millions of dollars in development. In this work, we quantify the gain in productivity of a team of repairable robots compared to a team without repair capabilities. We create a model using an extension of standard reliability theory. It allows the definition of a metric which is used to compare the two teams. The analysis yields insight into the design of repairable robot teams under a certain set of assumptions. The model also demonstrates scenarios where repair capabilities are not likely to be beneficial.