Local Topology Inference of Mobile Robotic Networks under Formation Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for local topology inference in mobile robotic networks under formation control, using a range-shrink strategy and least squares estimation to accurately determine interaction topology despite limited observations.

Contribution

It proposes a new range-shrink strategy and algorithms for topology inference in formation-controlled MRNs with limited observation, addressing unobservable robots and unknown interaction ranges.

Findings

Proposed algorithms accurately infer local topology under formation control.

The convergence rate and accuracy of the estimator are theoretically proven.

Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Abstract

The interaction topology is critical for efficient cooperation of mobile robotic networks (MRNs). We focus on the local topology inference problem of MRNs under formation control, where an inference robot with limited observation range can manoeuvre among the formation robots. This problem faces new challenges brought by the highly coupled influence of unobservable formation robots, inaccessible formation inputs, and unknown interaction range. The novel idea here is to advocate a range-shrink strategy to perfectly avoid the influence of unobservable robots while filtering the input. To that end, we develop consecutive algorithms to determine a feasible constant robot subset from the changing robot set within the observation range, and estimate the formation input and the interaction range. Then, an ordinary least squares based local topology estimator is designed with the previously inferred information. Resorting to the concentration measure, we prove the convergence rate and accuracy of the proposed estimator, taking the estimation errors of previous steps into account. Extensions on nonidentical observation slots and more complicated scenarios are also analyzed. Comprehensive simulation tests and method comparisons corroborate the theoretical findings.