Summary
While there has been significant progress in recent years in the study of estimation and control of dynamic network graphs, limited attention has been paid to the experimental validation and verification of such algorithms on distributed teams of robots. In this work we conduct an experimental study of a non-trivial distributed connectivity control algorithm on a team of seven nonholonomic robots as well as in simulation. The implementation of the algorithm is completely decentralized and asynchronous, assuming that each robot only has access to its pose and knowledge of the total number of robots. All other necessary information is determined via message passing with neighboring robots. We show that such algorithms, requiring complex inter-agent communication and coordination, are feasible as well as highly successful in enabling a network of robots to adapt to disturbances while preserving connectivity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Cortes, J., Martinez, S., Bullo, F.: Robust rendezvous for mobile autonomous agents via proximity graphs in arbitrary dimensions. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 51, 1289–1298 (2006)
Hsieh, M.A., Cowley, A., Kumar, V., Taylor, C.J.: Maintaining network connectivity and performance in robot teams. Journal of Field Robotics 25(1-2), 111–131 (2008)
Zavlanos, M.M., Pappas, G.J.: Distributed connectivity control of mobile networks. In: Proc. of the IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control, New Orleans, LA, December 2007, pp. 3591–3596 (2007)
Spanos, D.P., Murray, R.M.: Robust connectivity of networked vehicles. In: Proc. of the IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control, Bahamas, December 2004, pp. 2893–2898 (2004)
Ji, M., Egerstedt, M.: Distributed coordination control of multiagent systems while preserving connectedness. IEEE Transactions on Robotics 23(4), 693–703 (2007)
Mesbahi, M.: On state-dependent dynamic graphs and their controllability properties. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 50, 387–392 (2005)
Kim, Y., Mesbahi, M.: On maximizing the second smallest eigenvalue of a state-dependent graph laplacian. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 51(1), 116–120 (2006)
DeGennaro, M.C., Jadbabaie, A.: Decentralized control of connectivity for multi-agent systems. In: Proc. of the IEEE Conf. on Decision and Control, San Diego, CA, March 2006, pp. 3628–3633 (2006)
Dias, M.B., Zlot, R., Kalra, N., Stentz, A.: Market-based multirobot coordination: A survey and analysis. Proc. of the IEEE 94(7), 1257–1270 (2006)
Lindhe, M., Johansson, H., Bicchi, A.: An experimental study of exploiting multipath fading for robot communications. In: Robotics: Science and Systems, Atlanta, GA (June 2007)
Hsieh, M.A., Cowley, A., Kumar, V., Taylor, C.J.: Towards the deployment of a mobile robot network with end-to-end performance guarantees. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Orlando, FL, May 2006, pp. 2085–2090 (2006)
Zeiger, F., Kraemer, N., Schilling, K.: Commanding mobile robots via wireless ad-hoc networks - a comparison of four ad-hoc routing protocol implementations. In: Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Pasadena, CA, May 2008, pp. 590–595 (2008)
Godsil, C., Royle, G.: Algebraic Graph Theory. Springer Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 207. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)
Gerkey, B.P., Vaughan, R.T., Howard, A.: The Player/Stage Project: Tools for multi-robot and distributed sensor systems. In: Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Advanced Robotics, Coimbra, Portugal, June 2003, pp. 317–323 (2003)
Michael, N., Fink, J., Kumar, V.: Experimental testbed for large multi-robot teams: Verification and validation. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine 15(1), 53–61 (2008)
Sastry, S.: Nonlinear Systems: Analysis, Stability, and Control. Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics, vol. 10. Springer, New York (1999)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Michael, N., Zavlanos, M.M., Kumar, V., Pappas, G.J. (2009). Maintaining Connectivity in Mobile Robot Networks. In: Khatib, O., Kumar, V., Pappas, G.J. (eds) Experimental Robotics. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 54. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00196-3_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00196-3_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-00195-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-00196-3
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)