Abstract
We develop a synchronous rendezvous strategy for a network of minimally actuated mobile sensors or active drifters to monitor a set of Lagrangian Coherent Structure (LCS) bounded regions, each exhibiting gyre-like flows. This paper examines the conditions under which a pair of neighboring agents achieves synchronous rendezvous relying solely on the inherent flow dynamics within each LCS bounded region. The objective is to enable drifters in adjacent LCS bounded regions to rendezvous in a periodic fashion to exchange and fuse sensor data. We propose an agent-level control strategy to regulate the drifter speed in each monitoring region as well as to maximize the time the drifters are connected and able to communicate at every rendezvous. The strategy utilizes minimal actuation to ensure synchronization between neighboring pairs of drifters to ensure periodic rendezvous. The intermittent synchronization policy enables a locally connected network of minimally actuated mobile sensors to converge to a common orbit frequency. Robustness analysis against possible disturbance in practice and simulations are provided to illustrate the results.
Highlights
There is much interest in using networked distributed robotic systems for large-scale environmental monitoring applications, such as coastal surveillance, scientific data collection, and surveying for ocean mining (Yuh et al, 2011; Zhang et al, 2015)
Decomposing the workspace along Lagrangian Coherent Structure (LCS) boundaries allows mobile sensors to leverage the surrounding fluid dynamics for navigation, enabling an energy aware control strategy (Kularatne et al, 2018; Wei et al, 2019). Within this geophysical fluid context, the synchronous rendezvous problem can be mapped to a problem akin to the synchronization of networked oscillators often found in physics, biology, neuroscience, and engineering (Buck and Buck, 1968; Shuai and Durand, 1999; Pikovsky et al, 2001)
In Wei et al (2018a), we provided strategies for a team of robots to synchronize their frequencies and realize periodic rendezvous
Summary
There is much interest in using networked distributed robotic systems for large-scale environmental monitoring applications, such as coastal surveillance, scientific data collection, and surveying for ocean mining (Yuh et al, 2011; Zhang et al, 2015). Swarms of marine robots can cover large areas and simultaneously collect, process, and interpret data at various distinct geographic locations of interest over prolonged periods of time These vehicles must operate with finite power budgets and it is extremely important to consider energy aware control and coordination strategies for any data harvesting, exchange, and upload applications. Decomposing the workspace along LCS boundaries allows mobile sensors to leverage the surrounding fluid dynamics for navigation, enabling an energy aware control strategy (Kularatne et al, 2018; Wei et al, 2019) Within this geophysical fluid context, the synchronous rendezvous problem can be mapped to a problem akin to the synchronization of networked oscillators often found in physics, biology, neuroscience, and engineering (Buck and Buck, 1968; Shuai and Durand, 1999; Pikovsky et al, 2001).
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