Nearest Neighbor-based Rendezvous for Sparsely Connected Mobile Agents

TL;DR

This paper introduces a convergent nearest-neighbor control protocol for mobile agents with complex dynamics, ensuring rendezvous despite limited communication, applicable to various robotic platforms.

Contribution

It proposes a novel two-layer decentralized control protocol that guarantees convergence for agents with nontrivial dynamics using only nearest-neighbor communication.

Findings

Protocol guarantees convergence to a common point.

Works with agents having second order dynamics.

Applicable to UGVs, UAVs, and holonomic agents.

Abstract

In this paper a convergent, nearest-neighbor, control protocol is suggested for agents with nontrivial dynamics. The protocol guarantees convergence to a common point in space even if each agent is restricted to communicate with a single nearest neighbor. The neighbor, however, is required to lie outside an arbitrarily small priority zone surrounding the agent. The control protocol consists of two layers interconnected in a provably-correct manner. The first layer provides the guidance signal to a rendezvous point assuming that the agents have first order dynamics. The other layer converts in a decentralized manner the guidance signal to a control signal that suits realistic agents such as UGVs, UAVs and holonomic agents with second order dynamics.