Distributed PDOP Coverage Control: Providing Large-Scale Positioning Service Using a Multi-Robot System

This manuscript addresses the active positioning service using a multi-robot system (MRS) for providing large-scale coverage and scalability in terms of MRS size. Inspired by the coverage control problems from Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) literature, we propose a gradient-based control method where a
position dilution of precision
(PDOP) field is applied to indicate the performance of the positioning service. We derive the gradient of the PDOP field through rigorous derivation, which can be distributively computed by each robot using only the local information from itself and its neighbors. Extensive simulation results show that our proposed method is robust to initial positions, scalable to MRS size, and can extend the coverage area of the positioning service by leveraging the mobility and coordination within the MRS.