Topology design for router networks to accomplish a cooperative exploring task

It is a new challenge in robotics to enable robots with limited communication and sensing capabilities to accomplish complex group tasks. An emerging research is that a robot equipped with wireless network modules acts as a mobile router to bridge the communications of among the robot network. How to configure the robot network topology adaptively to fulfill both the task allocation and execution requirements is still remain unsolved. In this paper, we aim to address this challenging problem by developing a dynamic hierarchic backbone chain-cluster network topology for the robot network. The proposed network topology can be reconfigured adaptively and the reachability of the mobile user can be enhanced. Simulations are performed on a group of mobile robots to demonstrate the effectiveness of this proposed approach.

[1]  Jie Yang,et al.  A bounded controller for multirobot navigation while maintaining network connectivity in the presence of obstacles , 2013, Autom..

[2]  Chien Chern Cheah,et al.  Region-based shape control for a swarm of robots , 2009, Autom..

[3]  Jindong Tan,et al.  Distributed multi-robot coordination in area exploration , 2006, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[4]  N Bezzo,et al.  Tethering of mobile router networks , 2010, Proceedings of the 2010 American Control Conference.

[5]  Wei Yang,et al.  Robotic Routers: Algorithms and Implementation , 2009, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[6]  Jian Chen,et al.  Leader-Follower Formation Control of Multiple Non-holonomic Mobile Robots Incorporating a Receding-horizon Scheme , 2010, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[7]  Dong Sun,et al.  Coordinated Motion Planning for Multiple Mobile Robots Along Designed Paths With Formation Requirement , 2011, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[8]  Jie Yang,et al.  Preserving Multirobot Connectivity in Rendezvous Tasks in the Presence of Obstacles With Bounded Control Input , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology.

[9]  Hua Wang,et al.  Consensus on scale-free network , 2008, 2008 American Control Conference.

[10]  Luis Montano,et al.  Enforcing Network Connectivity in Robot Team Missions , 2010, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[11]  Richard M. Murray,et al.  Consensus problems in networks of agents with switching topology and time-delays , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

[12]  Michail G. Lagoudakis,et al.  Multi-robot routing under limited communication range , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[13]  Katia P. Sycara,et al.  Reconfiguration algorithms for mobile robotic networks , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[14]  Gang Feng,et al.  A Synchronization Approach to Trajectory Tracking of Multiple Mobile Robots While Maintaining Time-Varying Formations , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.