Coverage enhancement of mobile multi-agent networks while preserving global connectivity

This paper addresses the problem of coverage enhancement for a team of mobile agents with consideration of global connectivity. A hybrid coverage enhancement system is developed, consisting of two distinctive layers. In network control layer, a link removal algorithm is designed to generate a sparse network structure while preserving the global connectivity. A potential function based motion controller is synthesized in motion control layer to disperse a team of mobile agents while avoiding any inter-agent collisions. The proposed hybrid coverage enhancement system can reconfigure an initially compact multi-agent system to achieve a certain level of coverage with guaranteed connectivity and collision avoidance. Moreover, the proposed method can be used in both two dimensional area coverage enhancement and three dimensional space coverage enhancement.