Coverage Control for Multi-Robot Teams with Heterogeneous Sensing Capabilities Using Limited Communications

摘要

This paper presents a coverage algorithm for multi-robot systems where the robots are equipped with qualitatively different sensing modalities. Unlike previous approaches to the problem of coverage for teams with heterogeneous sensing capabilities, in this paper the robots have access to information about their neighbors' specific sensor modalities. This knowledge affords the ability of ensuring that no robot is tasked with covering features in a region without the required sensing modalities. With this information, a robot can determine which of its neighbors it should coordinate with to cover the environmental features in a region while ignoring robots that are not equipped with that particular sensory capability. We derive a distributed control algorithm that allows the robots to move in a direction of descent relative to a novel locational cost, in order to minimize it. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated on a real robotic platform.