The Role of Heterogeneity in Autonomous Perimeter Defense Problems

TL;DR

This paper explores how heterogeneity in robotic team speeds affects perimeter defense effectiveness, revealing that information availability influences team composition benefits and that an optimal speed ratio is nearly universal.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal model analyzing heterogeneous speeds in perimeter defense, providing theoretical insights and validation through simulations.

Findings

Heterogeneity's benefit depends on information availability.

Optimal speed ratio remains nearly constant across parameters.

Theoretical and simulation results support the universality property.

Abstract

When is heterogeneity in the composition of an autonomous robotic team beneficial and when is it detrimental? We investigate and answer this question in the context of a minimally viable model that examines the role of heterogeneous speeds in perimeter defense problems, where defenders share a total allocated speed budget. We consider two distinct problem settings and develop strategies based on dynamic programming and on local interaction rules. We present a theoretical analysis of both approaches and our results are extensively validated using simulations. Interestingly, our results demonstrate that the viability of heterogeneous teams depends on the amount of information available to the defenders. Moreover, our results suggest a universality property: across a wide range of problem parameters the optimal ratio of the speeds of the defenders remains nearly constant.