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Robust Adaptive Coverage for Robotic Sensor Networks

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Robotics Research

Part of the book series: Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics ((STAR,volume 100))

Abstract

This paper presents a distributed control algorithm to drive a group of robots to spread out over an environment and provide adaptive sensor coverage of that environment. The robots use an on-line learning mechanism to approximate the areas in the environment which require more concentrated sensor coverage, while simultaneously exploring the environment before moving to final positions to provide this coverage. More precisely, the robots learn a scalar field, called the weighting function, representing the relative importance of different regions in the environment, and use a Traveling Salesperson based exploration method, followed by a Voronoi-based coverage controller to position themselves for sensing over the environment. The algorithm differs from previous approaches in that provable robustness is emphasized in the representation of the weighting function. It is proved that the robots approximate the weighting function with a known bounded error, and that they converge to locations that are locally optimal for sensing with respect to the approximate weighting function. Simulations using empirically measured light intensity data are presented to illustrate the performance of the method.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These assumptions can be relaxed to certain classes of nonconvex environments with obstacles [2, 4 18].

  2. 2.

    We have pursued an intuitive development of this cost function, though more rigorous arguments can also be made [24]. This function is known in several fields of study including the placement of retail facilities [8] and data compression [12].

  3. 3.

    The computation of this gradient is more complex than it may seem, because the Voronoi cells V i (P) depend on P, which results in extra integral terms. Fortunately, these extra terms all sum to zero, as shown in, e.g. [19].

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded in part by ONR MURI Grants N00014-07-1-0829, N00014-09-1-1051, and N00014-09-1-1031, and the SMART Future Mobility project. We are grateful for this financial support.

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Correspondence to Mac Schwager .

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Schwager, M., Vitus, M.P., Rus, D., Tomlin, C.J. (2017). Robust Adaptive Coverage for Robotic Sensor Networks. In: Christensen, H., Khatib, O. (eds) Robotics Research . Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 100. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29363-9_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29363-9_25

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