Simultaneous Intermittent Communication Control and Path Optimization in Networks of Mobile Robots

TL;DR

This paper introduces a distributed framework for mobile robot networks that ensures intermittent connectivity and path optimization by using local and global LTL specifications, conflict resolution, and asynchronous execution.

Contribution

It presents a novel method to decompose global LTL connectivity requirements into local expressions and resolve conflicts for coordinated robot motion planning.

Findings

The framework guarantees intermittent network connectivity.

Robots follow conflict-free motion plans satisfying global LTL constraints.

Asynchronous execution of controllers is feasible with introduced delays.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an intermittent communication framework for mobile robot networks. Specifically, we consider robots that move along the edges of a connected mobility graph and communicate only when they meet at the nodes of that graph giving rise to a dynamic communication network. Our proposed distributed controllers ensure intermittent connectivity of the network and path optimization, simultaneously. We show that the intermittent connectivity requirement can be encapsulated by a global Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formula. Then we approximately decompose it into local LTL expressions which are then assigned to the robots. To avoid conflicting robot behaviors that can occur due to this approximate decomposition, we develop a distributed conflict resolution scheme that generates non-conflicting discrete motion plans for every robot, based on the assigned local LTL expressions, whose composition satisfies the global LTL formula. By appropriately introducing delays in the execution of the generated motion plans we also show that the proposed controllers can be executed asynchronously.