Communication Backbone Reconfiguration with Connectivity Maintenance

TL;DR

This paper presents a trajectory planning framework for reconfiguring multi-agent communication backbones, ensuring connectivity while allowing flexible robot deployment and distances, leveraging manipulator motion planning techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach that redefines multi-agent network reconfiguration as a manipulator motion planning problem, enabling practical and adaptable solutions.

Findings

Framework effectively maintains connectivity during reconfiguration

Applicable to variable robot configurations and distance constraints

Leverages existing manipulator motion planning algorithms

Abstract

The exchange of information is key in applications that involve multiple agents, such as search and rescue, military operations, and disaster response. In this work, we propose a simple and effective trajectory planning framework that tackles the design, deployment, and reconfiguration of a communication backbone by reframing the problem of networked multi-agent motion planning as a manipulator motion planning problem. Our approach works for backbones of variable configurations both in terms of the number of robots utilized and the distance limit between each robot. While research has been conducted on connection-restricted navigation for multi-robot systems in the last years, the field of manipulators is arguably more developed both in theory and practice. Hence, our methodology facilitates practical applications built on top of widely available motion planning algorithms and frameworks for manipulators.