Optimal Coverage Control of Multi-agent Systems in Constrained Environments with Line-of-sight Connectivity Preservation

This paper addresses the optimal coverage control problem of multi-agent systems in constrained environments with static or moving obstacles. The multi-agent systems take a leader-follower framework while the leader’s trajectory is given and the goal of the team is to maximize the coverage metric while maintaining the line-of-sight communication connectivity and obstacle avoidance along with the leader’s movement. We propose a Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) approach by modeling the connectivity constraints and the obstacle avoidance constraints as some nonlinear constraints. This approach will provide an off-line solution for dealing with constrained coverage problems with obstacles. Simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness of the method.