Maintaining a robust communication network plays an important role in the success of a multi-robot team jointly performing an optimization task. A key characteristic of a robust cooperative multi-robot system is the ability to repair the communication topology in the case of robot failure. In this paper, we focus on the Fast k-connectivity Restoration (FCR) problem, which aims to repair a network to make it k-connected with minimum robot movement. Here, a k-connected network refers to a communication topology that cannot be disconnected by removing \(k-1\) nodes. We develop a Quadratically Constrained Program (QCP) formulation of the FCR problem, which provides a way to optimally solve the problem, but cannot handle large instances due to high computational overhead. We therefore present a scalable algorithm, called EA-SCR, for the FCR problem using graph theoretic concepts. By conducting empirical studies, we demonstrate that the EA-SCR algorithm performs within 10% of the optimal while being orders of magnitude faster. We also show that EA-SCR outperforms existing solutions by 30% in terms of the FCR distance metric.

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Fast k-Connectivity Restoration in Multi-robot Systems for Robust Communication Maintenance

  • Md Ishat-E-Rabban,
  • Guangyao Shi,
  • Griffin Bonner,
  • Pratap Tokekar

摘要

Maintaining a robust communication network plays an important role in the success of a multi-robot team jointly performing an optimization task. A key characteristic of a robust cooperative multi-robot system is the ability to repair the communication topology in the case of robot failure. In this paper, we focus on the Fast k-connectivity Restoration (FCR) problem, which aims to repair a network to make it k-connected with minimum robot movement. Here, a k-connected network refers to a communication topology that cannot be disconnected by removing \(k-1\) nodes. We develop a Quadratically Constrained Program (QCP) formulation of the FCR problem, which provides a way to optimally solve the problem, but cannot handle large instances due to high computational overhead. We therefore present a scalable algorithm, called EA-SCR, for the FCR problem using graph theoretic concepts. By conducting empirical studies, we demonstrate that the EA-SCR algorithm performs within 10% of the optimal while being orders of magnitude faster. We also show that EA-SCR outperforms existing solutions by 30% in terms of the FCR distance metric.