Decentralized identification and control of networks of coupled mobile platforms through adaptive synchronization of chaos

•Adaptive strategy to detect variations of network topology.•Estimation of connectivity links.•Synchronization of chaotic oscillators.•Decentralized controller to maintain a desired network formation.•A novel chaotic synchronization based formation control algorithm.

In this paper, we propose an application of adaptive synchronization of chaos to detect changes in the topology of a mobile robotic network. We assume that the network may evolve in time due to the relative motion of the mobile robots and due to unknown environmental conditions, such as the presence of obstacles in the environment. We consider that each robotic agent is equipped with a chaotic oscillator whose state is propagated to the other robots through wireless communication, with the goal of synchronizing the oscillators. We introduce an adaptive strategy that each agent independently implements to: (i) estimate the net coupling of all the oscillators in its neighborhood and (ii) synchronize the state of the oscillators onto the same time evolution. We show that, by using this strategy, synchronization can be attained and changes in the network topology can be detected. We further consider the possibility of using this information to control the mobile network. We apply our technique to the problem of maintaining a formation between a set of mobile platforms which operate in an inhomogeneous and uncertain environment. We discuss the importance of using chaotic oscillators, and validate our methodology by numerical simulations.