Effective Coverage Control using Dynamic Sensor Networks with Flocking and Guaranteed Collision Avoidance

This paper studies the problem of dynamically covering a given region D in R2 using a set of N mobile sensor agents. The coverage goal is to sample each point in the mission domain to a desired preset level. It is crucial in many dynamic coverage missions that the vehicles flock to guarantee reliable wireless communication links between the agents, while avoiding the risk of collisions. Dynamic coverage control strategies developed by the authors in their previous publications are modified for both flocking and guaranteed collision avoidance. Several numerical examples are provided to illustrate the main ideas.