Connectivity Awareness in Networked Robotics System

Abstract

Maintaining the network connectivity during the mission of robots in Mobile Multi-Robot Systems (MRSs) is a key issue in many robotics applications. In our view, the solution to this problem consists of two main steps: (i) making robots aware of the network connectivity; and (ii), making use of this knowledge in order to plan robots tasks without compromising the connectivity. In this paper, we view the network connectivity as an abstraction that is independent from application issues. With respect to (i), we propose a new distributed algorithm that will be executed on individual robots to build and maintain the connectivity-awareness. The correctness and theoretical analysis, as well as the simulation results of the proposed algorithm are given. For illustrating (ii), first we show how our solution allows checking the robustness of network connectivity more efficiently than existing works; and second, we present an application of using this awareness in distributed robot motion control to preserve the robot network connectivity.