Enhanced Connectivity Maintenance for Multi–Robot Systems

In this work, the decentralized control law proposed in [Sabattini et al., 2011b] for multi-robot connectivity maintenance is enhanced by means of a selective action. The idea is to identify critical agents, i.e. agents for which a disconnection might cause the split of the communication graph, and limit the control action to those agents. The objective is twofold: to reduce the control effort introduced by the connectivity maintenance control action as well as to avoid unnecessary action of the connectivity maintenance controller, thus reducing its effect on the overall performances of the system. A theoretical analysis of the proposed control law is discussed. Simulations along with experimental results are given to corroborate the theoretical results.