DocumentCode :
3021384
Title :
Optimizing communication in air-ground robot networks using decentralized control
Author :
Gil, Stephanie ; Schwager, Mac ; Julian, Brian J. ; Rus, Daniela
Author_Institution :
Comput. Sci. & Artificial Intell. Lab. (CSAIL), MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
fYear :
2010
fDate :
3-7 May 2010
Firstpage :
1964
Lastpage :
1971
Abstract :
We develop a distributed controller to position a team of aerial vehicles in a configuration that optimizes communication-link quality, to support a team of ground vehicles performing a collaborative task. We propose a gradient-based control approach where agents´ positions locally minimize a physically motivated cost function. The contributions of this paper are threefold. We formulate of a cost function that incorporates a continuous, physical model of signal quality, SIR. We develop a non-smooth gradient-based controller that positions aerial vehicles to acheive optimized signal quality amongst all vehicles in the system. This controller is provably convergent while allowing for non-differentiability due to agents moving in or out of communication with one another. Lastly, we guarantee that given certain initial conditions or certain values of the control parameters, aerial vehicles will never disconnect the connectivity graph. We demonstrate our controller on hardware experiments using AscTec Hummingbird quadrotors and provide aggregate results over 10 trials. We also provide hardware-in-the-loop and MATALB simulation results, which demonstrate positioning of the aerial vehicles to minimize the cost function H and improve signal-quality amongst all communication links in the ground/air robot team.
Keywords :
aerospace robotics; aircraft control; cooperative systems; decentralised control; gradient methods; mobile robots; multi-robot systems; position control; telecommunication links; AscTec Hummingbird quadrotors; MATALB simulation; aerial vehicle positioning; aerial vehicles; air-ground robot networks; collaborative task; communication links; communication optimization; communication-link quality; connectivity graph; decentralized control; distributed controller; ground vehicles; ground-air robot team; hardware-in-the-loop; nonsmooth gradient-based controller; optimized signal quality; position control; Collaboration; Communication system control; Control systems; Cost function; Distributed control; Ground support; Hardware; Land vehicles; Road vehicles; Robots;
fLanguage :
English
Publisher :
ieee
Conference_Titel :
Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2010 IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Anchorage, AK
ISSN :
1050-4729
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-5038-1
Electronic_ISBN :
1050-4729
Type :
conf
DOI :
10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509622
Filename :
5509622
Link To Document :
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