Intermittent Connectivity Maintenance with Heterogeneous Robots Using a Beads-On-A-Ring Strategy

Abstract

We consider a scenario of cooperative task servicing, with a team of heterogeneous robots with different maximum speeds and communication radii, in charge of keeping the network intermittently connected. We abstract the task locations into a 1D cycle graph that is traversed by the communicating robots, and we discuss intermittent communication strategies so that each task location is periodically visited, with a worst–case revisiting time. Robots move forward and backward along the cycle graph, exchanging data with their previous and next neighbors when they meet, and updating their region boundaries. Asymptotically, each robot is in charge of a region of the cycle graph, depending on its capabilities. The method is distributed, and robots only exchange data when they meet.