Multirobot Exploration While Building Power-Efficient Sensor Networks in Three Dimensions

An information (sensor) network can be used to monitor various 3-D environments, such as underwater environments. To build an information network in 3-D environments, we use multiple robots deploying information nodes. Our 3-D networking strategy results in the network without coverage holes and does not require the global localization of a node or a robot. We assume that as the size of each sensor coverage decreases, the power consumption of the sensor decreases. Thus, once the 3-D network is built by multiple robots, each node searches for the smallest size of its sensing coverage while assuring that there is no hole in the global coverage. In this way, we save the power consumption while preserving the global coverage. Note that each node searches for its optimal sensing coverage by accessing the relative positions of its neighbors only once. This implies that energy consumption of searching for the optimal coverage is very low. Using MATLAB simulations, we verify the scalability and effectiveness of our strategies in 3-D environments.