Decentralized topology control for robotic networks with limited field of view sensors

Abstract

Preserving connectivity of a network topology is a crucial aspect for multi-robot systems in order to perform almost any collaborative task. This problem turns out to be significantly challenging in the case of a heterogeneous multirobot system equipped with different sensors with limited field of view. Such an interaction scheme, in fact, is described by directed graphs (digraphs), for which, a few approaches have still been presented in literature. This paper addresses the problem of estimating an approximated minimum strongly connected digraph contained in a given digraph. A novel decentralized approach is proposed and its suitability is confirmed by simulations.