TY - GEN
T1 - Optimizing communication in air-ground robot networks using decentralized control
AU - Gil, Stephanie
AU - Schwager, Mac
AU - Julian, Brian J.
AU - Rus, Daniela
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - We develop a distributed controller to position a team of aerial vehicles in a configuration that optimizes communication-link quality, to support a team of ground vehicles performing a collaborative task.We propose a gradient-based control approach where agents' positions locally minimize a physically motivated cost function. The contributions of this paper are threefold. We formulate of a cost function that incorporates a continuous, physical model of signal quality, SIR. We develop a non-smooth gradient-based controller that positions aerial vehicles to acheive optimized signal quality amongst all vehicles in the system. This controller is provably convergent while allowing for non-differentiability due to agents moving in or out of communication with one another. Lastly, we guarantee that given certain initial conditions or certain values of the control parameters, aerial vehicles will never disconnect the connectivity graph. We demonstrate our controller on hardware experiments using AscTec Hummingbird quadrotors and provide aggregate results over 10 trials. We also provide hardware-in-the-loop and MATALB simulation results, which demonstrate positioning of the aerial vehicles to minimize the cost function H and improve signal-quality amongst all communication links in the ground/air robot team.
AB - We develop a distributed controller to position a team of aerial vehicles in a configuration that optimizes communication-link quality, to support a team of ground vehicles performing a collaborative task.We propose a gradient-based control approach where agents' positions locally minimize a physically motivated cost function. The contributions of this paper are threefold. We formulate of a cost function that incorporates a continuous, physical model of signal quality, SIR. We develop a non-smooth gradient-based controller that positions aerial vehicles to acheive optimized signal quality amongst all vehicles in the system. This controller is provably convergent while allowing for non-differentiability due to agents moving in or out of communication with one another. Lastly, we guarantee that given certain initial conditions or certain values of the control parameters, aerial vehicles will never disconnect the connectivity graph. We demonstrate our controller on hardware experiments using AscTec Hummingbird quadrotors and provide aggregate results over 10 trials. We also provide hardware-in-the-loop and MATALB simulation results, which demonstrate positioning of the aerial vehicles to minimize the cost function H and improve signal-quality amongst all communication links in the ground/air robot team.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77955795755&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=77955795755&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509622
DO - 10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509622
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:77955795755
SN - 9781424450381
T3 - Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
SP - 1964
EP - 1971
BT - 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2010
T2 - 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2010
Y2 - 3 May 2010 through 7 May 2010
ER -