Awareness Coverage Control Over Large-Scale Domains With Intermittent Communications

In this paper, a novel dynamic awareness model is proposed and applied to coverage control over large-scale task domains using a decentralized multi-vehicle sensor network with intermittent communications and/or faulty sensors. For each vehicle, an individual state of awareness is defined. The individual vehicle´s state of awareness continuously evolves based on the vehicle´s motion and is updated at discrete instants whenever the vehicle establishes a communication link with other vehicles. This information sharing update step aids in reducing the amount of redundant coverage. Based on this awareness model, a decentralized control strategy is proposed that guarantees that every point within the task domain will be covered with a satisfactory state of awareness under intermittent communications and/or faulty sensors. We demonstrate the results using numerical simulations.