Vision based connectivity maintenance of a network with switching topology

Networks of cooperating agents are investigated for formation and coverage control, target tracking, flocking, and consensus applications. Within these applications, agents are required to coordinate to make appropriate decisions and achieve desired goals; hence, the ability to maintain connectivity with other agents is paramount. In this paper, we propose a two level control framework for connectivity maintenance and cooperation of multi-agent systems. Each agent is equipped with an omnidirectional camera and wireless communication capabilities. Image feedback is the primary method to maintain connectivity among agents with wireless communication that is only used to broadcast information when a specific topology change occurs. All agents in the team are categorized as clusterheads or regular nodes. A high level graph is composed of all clusterheads and the motion of the clusterheads is controlled to maintain existing connections among them. A low level graph composed of all regular nodes is controlled to maintain connectivity with respect its specific clusterhead.