Simultaneous deployment and tracking multi-robot strategies with connectivity maintenance

Tardós, J. (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Aragues, R. (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Sagüés, C. (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Rubio, C. (Universidad de Zaragoza)

Resumen: Multi-robot teams composed of ground and aerial vehicles have gained attention during the last few years. We present a scenario where both types of robots must monitor the same area from different view points. In this paper, we propose two Lloyd-based tracking strategies to allow the ground robots (agents) to follow the aerial ones (targets), keeping the connectivity between the agents. The first strategy establishes density functions on the environment so that the targets acquire more importance than other zones, while the second one iteratively modifies the virtual limits of the working area depending on the positions of the targets. We consider the connectivity maintenance due to the fact that coverage tasks tend to spread the agents as much as possible, which is addressed by restricting their motions so that they keep the links of a minimum spanning tree of the communication graph. We provide a thorough parametric study of the performance of the proposed strategies under several simulated scenarios. In addition, the methods are implemented and tested using realistic robotic simulation environments and real experiments.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.3390/s18030927

Año: 2018

Publicado en: Sensors 18, 3 (2018), 927 [24 pp]
ISSN: 1424-8220

Factor impacto JCR: 3.031 (2018)

Categ. JCR: INSTRUMENTS & INSTRUMENTATION rank: 15 / 61 = 0.246 (2018) - Q1 - T1
Categ. JCR: CHEMISTRY, ANALYTICAL rank: 23 / 84 = 0.274 (2018) - Q2 - T1
Categ. JCR: ELECTROCHEMISTRY rank: 12 / 26 = 0.462 (2018) - Q2 - T2

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 0.592 - Analytical Chemistry (Q2) - Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics (Q2) - Medicine (miscellaneous) (Q2) - Electrical and Electronic Engineering (Q2) - Instrumentation (Q2) - Biochemistry (Q2)

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO-FEDER/DPI2015-69376-R
Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/UZ/JIUZ-2017-TEC-01

Tipo y forma: Artículo (Versión definitiva)

Área (Departamento): Área Química Analítica (Dpto. Química Analítica)
Área (Departamento): Área Ingen.Sistemas y Automát. (Dpto. Informát.Ingenie.Sistms.)