Multi-Robot Control Using Coverage Over Time-Varying Domains: Extended Abstract

Abstract

An approach is proposed to influence the motion of a group of robots by using time-varying domains and multi-agent coverage control. We synthesize controllers for the individual agents by specifying the desired spread and motion of the multi-robot team as a whole. The result is an approach that is agnostic to the size of the multi-robot team and that does not require assignments of roles, e.g., leaders and followers. The modified coverage optimization problem is stated to accommodate time-varying domains, and a control strategy is proposed to solve the problem with exponential convergence guarantees. Analytical expressions for the surface and line integral terms in the proposed coverage control law can be provided for the uniform coverage density case. A robot implementation of the control strategy on a multi-robot team is used to validate the results.