Cooperative positioning/orientation control of mobile heterogeneous anisotropic sensor networks for area coverage

Abstract

This article examines the coordination problem of the nodes' motion in a heterogeneous anisotropic mobile sensor network for area coverage purposes. The mobile agents are assumed to have non-uniform with varying scaling sensing ability around themselves. The nodes' sensor footprint is allowed to be any arbitrary compact planar set, while the coordination scheme accounts for rotation of the latter. The domain sensed by the swarm is partitioned via the proposed distributed scheme that differentiates for standard Voronoi-alike distance-based metrics. The distributed cooperative scheme developed manages to lead the group towards an area-optimal configuration via proper control of the movement and rotation of each sensing node. Numerical results are provided in order to indicate the efficiency of the proposed technique.

Distributed area coverage control with imprecise robot localization

“…Figure 4 also shows the other domains of integration used in equation (13) @W R i \ @C gs i , @W R j \ @H ji , and @W R k \ @H ki . The proposed law equation (10) leads to a gradient flow of H along the agents' trajectories, while H increases monotonically, since…”

“…Other factors that affect the choice of control scheme are the dynamics of the agents used, 6,7 the geometrical characteristics of the region of interest, 8,9 and the sensing performance of the agents' sensors. 10,11 Several varying approaches to the coverage problem have been proposed, including annealing algorithms, 12 game theory, 13 distributed optimization, 14 model predictive control, 15,16 optimal control, 17 and event-triggered control. 18 Due to the inherent uncertainty in the measurements of all localization systems, there is great interest in incorporating this uncertain information in the control scheme.…”

Collaborative visual area coverage

“…The assignment of responsibility regions to the nodes is achieved in a manner similar to [12], where only the subset of Ω sensed by the nodes is partitioned. Each node is assigned a cell…”

“…MAAs at higher altitudes cover more area but the coverage quality is 20 smaller compared to MAAs at lower altitudes. A partitioning scheme of the sensed region, similar to [12], is employed and a gradient based control law is developed.…”

Fault tolerant area coverage control for multiagent systems

“…These include game-theoretic methods [4], event-triggered control [5] or more classical methods such as distributed geometric optimization [6] and optimal control theory [7]. Several special cases of the blanket coverage problem have been examined, including coverage for non-convex domains [8,9], taking into account heterogeneous or anisotropic sensing patterns [10,11], accounting for more realistic agent dynamics [12] and ensuring communication among the agents [13].…”