Planning of Communication and Motion Strategies for Networked Mobile Robots

In this paper, the problem of decentralized co-planning of motion and communication strategies is investigated for the networked mobile robots which accomplish target visiting tasks. Information generated by the team is propagated to an operation center via a multi-hop wireless network wherein the end-to-end communication rates between robots and the operation center should stay above the given levels. In the suggested approach, each robot determines its own communication and motion variables by solving a convex optimization problem so that the assigned tasks are completed with optimal consumption of energy resources and avoiding inter-robot collisions. Compared to the existing methods, the proposed scheme leads to the efficient use of available robots which reduces the size of the robotic team. The simulation results are presented to demonstrate the capability of our method for successful navigation of robots towards the target positions, while all the required constraints are met.