Time-Aggregated Connectivity Maintenance for Multi-Robot Networks


Hao Liu, Yupeng Yang, Yanze Zhang, Yiwei Lyu, Wenhao Luo

Paper ID 43

Session Multi-robot Systems

Poster session details TBA

Abstract: Connectivity maintenance is critical for networked robot teams to exchange information and coordinate actions, yet enforcing persistent global connectivity can be unnecessarily restrictive when communication ranges are limited and teams operate at scale. In practice, robots must be allowed to temporarily disconnect so as to spread out efficiently, and then deliberately reconfigure their motions for local reconnection to maintain time-aggregated connectivity that allows information to flow across the team over a window of time. In this paper, we propose a novel motion coordination framework for robots to maintain time-aggregated connectivity while progressing to their individual goals. As a modularized layer built on top of robots’ nominal motion plans, it encompasses (a) a time-window aggregated minimum spanning tree (TWA-MST) approach to dynamically decide which robot pairs should be reconnected and when, and (b) a novel notion of adaptive prescribed-time control barrier functions (adaptive PT-CBF) that enforce assured reconnection by motion reconfiguration. This allows robots to follow their nominal plans while minimally adjusting motions to ensure time-aggregated connectivity over a defined time horizon. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.