Abstract
Multi-robot teams composed of ground and aerial vehicles have gained attention during the last few years. We present a scenario where both types of robots must monitor the same area from different view points. In this paper, we propose two Lloyd-based tracking strategies to allow the ground robots (agents) to follow the aerial ones (targets), keeping the connectivity between the agents. The first strategy establishes density functions on the environment so that the targets acquire more importance than other zones, while the second one iteratively modifies the virtual limits of the working area depending on the positions of the targets. We consider the connectivity maintenance due to the fact that coverage tasks tend to spread the agents as much as possible, which is addressed by restricting their motions so that they keep the links of a minimum spanning tree of the communication graph. We provide a thorough parametric study of the performance of the proposed strategies under several simulated scenarios. In addition, the methods are implemented and tested using realistic robotic simulation environments and real experiments.
Highlights
The coordination of autonomous robot teams has been a rising topic of interest during the last few decades
The main contributions of this paper are: (i) the proposal of methods for solving the problem of tracking a formation of targets or aerial robots with a team of agents or ground robots, covering the same areas as the targets and keeping the network connected; (ii) an algorithm based on virtual boundaries applicable to dynamic setups, which makes agents deploy in an -spaced configuration; (iii) we present extensive validations of our methods in different simulation scenarios and experiments under different setups
We propose and test two strategies to solve the problem of simultaneous coverage and tracking, taking into account sensing and communication limitations, while ensuring that the network remains connected
Summary
The coordination of autonomous robot teams has been a rising topic of interest during the last few decades. Surveillance or coverage are some of the most commonly-faced topics. Heterogeneous robot teams are gaining attention for monitoring tasks in dynamic environments. In [1], a method is presented for computing the localization of a group with both ground and aerial robots, using measurements that are not associated with identified robots. Considering the low battery life of the aerial robots, in [2], a group of them is assisted by a team of ground robots so that they can dock and recharge their batteries. Some authors focus on particular applications such as mobile sensory systems for monitoring environmental variables in greenhouses [3], instead of large sensor networks, or sediment sampling in estuarine mudflats [4] with drilling ground vehicles and aerial imagery robots
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