Abstract
In this paper, we study the Online Network Formation Problem (ONFP) for a mobile multi-robot system. Consider a group of robots with a bounded communication range operating in a large open area. One of the robots has a piece of information which has to be propagated to all other robots. What strategy should the robots pursue to disseminate the information to the rest of the robots as quickly as possible? The initial locations of the robots are unknown to each other, therefore the problem must be solved in an online fashion. For this problem, we present an algorithm whose competitive ratio is O(H \cdot\max\{M,\ \sqrt{MH}\}) for arbitrary robot deployments, where M is the largest edge length in the Euclidean minimum spanning tree on the initial robot configuration and H is the height of the tree. We also study the case when the robot initial positions are chosen uniformly at random and improve the ratio to O(M). Finally, we present simulation results to validate the performance in larger scales and demonstrate our algorithm using three robots in a field experiment.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2019 |
Publisher | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. |
Pages | 2011-2017 |
Number of pages | 7 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781538660263 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - May 2019 |
Event | 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2019 - Montreal, Canada Duration: May 20 2019 → May 24 2019 |
Publication series
Name | Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation |
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Volume | 2019-May |
ISSN (Print) | 1050-4729 |
Conference
Conference | 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2019 |
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Country/Territory | Canada |
City | Montreal |
Period | 5/20/19 → 5/24/19 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2019 IEEE.