Decentralized global connectivity maintenance for interconnected Lagrangian systems in the presence of data corruption

In order to accomplish cooperative tasks, multi-robot systems are required to communicate among each other. Thus, maintaining the connectivity of the communication graph is a fundamental issue. In this paper we develop a strategy based on Sabattini et al., Decentralized Connectivity Maintenance for Networked Lagrangian Dynamical Systems, 2012 for guaranteeing connectivity in the presence of data corruption. In fact, when dealing with real systems, several sources of data corruption can appear. For instance, sensor noise is one of the primary sources of data corruption. Moreover, when dealing with interconnected robotic systems, assuming instantaneous exchange of data is often unrealistic; communication delays are then another important source of data corruption. For this reason, we provide a solution to the connectivity maintenance problem for interconnected Lagrangian dynamical agents, in the presence of data corruption.