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Synchronous Rendezvous for Networks of Active Drifters in Gyre Flows

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Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics ((SPAR,volume 9))

Abstract

We develop a synchronous rendezvous strategy for a network of minimally actuated mobile sensors or active drifters. The drifters are tasked to monitor a set of Lagrangian Coherent Structure (LCS) bounded regions, each exhibiting gyre-like flows. This paper examines the conditions under which a pair of neighboring agents achieves synchronous rendezvous by leveraging the environmental dynamics in their monitoring region. The objective is to enable drifters in adjacent LCS bounded regions to rendezvous in a periodic fashion to exchange and fuse sensor data. We propose an agent-level control strategy to regulate the drifter speed in each monitoring region so as to maximize the time the drifters are connected and able to communicate at every rendezvous. The strategy utilizes minimal actuation to ensure synchronization between neighboring pairs of drifters to ensure periodic rendezvous. The intermittent synchronization policy enables a locally connected network of minimally actuated mobile sensors to converge to a common orbit frequency.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Noise can arise from uncertainty in model parameters and/or measurement noise.

  2. 2.

    For the full animation visit http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003800/a003827/.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) grant N000141712690.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Cong Wei & Herbert G. Tanner

  2. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Xi Yu & M. Ani Hsieh

Authors
  1. Cong Wei
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  2. Xi Yu
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  3. Herbert G. Tanner
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  4. M. Ani Hsieh
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xi Yu or M. Ani Hsieh .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Nikolaus Correll

  2. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Mac Schwager

  3. Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Michael Otte

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Wei, C., Yu, X., Tanner, H.G., Hsieh, M.A. (2019). Synchronous Rendezvous for Networks of Active Drifters in Gyre Flows. In: Correll, N., Schwager, M., Otte, M. (eds) Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05816-6_29

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