Multi-Agent Deployment for Visibility Coverage in Polygonal Environments with Holes

This article presents a distributed algorithm for a group of robotic agents with omnidirectional vision to deploy into nonconvex polygonal environments with holes. Agents begin deployment from a common point, possess no prior knowledge of the environment, and operate only under line-of-sight sensing and communication. The objective of the deployment is for the agents to achieve full visibility coverage of the environment while maintaining line-of-sight connectivity with each other. This is achieved by incrementally partitioning the environment into distinct regions, each completely visible from some agent. Proofs are given of (i) convergence, (ii) upper bounds on the time and number of agents required, and (iii) bounds on the memory and communication complexity. Simulation results and description of robust extensions are also included.

Asynchronous Distributed Searchlight Scheduling

This paper develops and compares two simple asynchronous distributed searchlight scheduling algorithms for multiple robotic agents in nonconvex polygonal environments. A searchlight is a ray emitted by an agent which cannot penetrate the boundary of the environment. A point is detected by a searchlight if and only if the point is on the ray at some instant. Targets are points which can move continuously with unbounded speed. The objective of the proposed algorithms is for the agents to coordinate the slewing (rotation about a point) of their searchlights in a distributed manner, i.e., using only local sensing and limited communication, such that any target will necessarily be detected in finite time. The first algorithm we develop, called the DOWSS (Distributed One Way Sweep Strategy), is a distributed version of a known algorithm described originally in 1990 by Sugihara et al \cite{KS-IS-MY:90}, but it can be very slow in clearing the entire environment because only one searchlight may slew at a time. In an effort to reduce the time to clear the environment, we develop a second algorithm, called the PTSS (Parallel Tree Sweep Strategy), in which searchlights sweep in parallel if guards are placed according to an environment partition belonging to a class we call PTSS partitions. Finally, we discuss how DOWSS and PTSS could be combined with with deployment, or extended to environments with holes.