Exploiting Control and Communications Technqiues to Establish and Maintain Network Connections for Robust and Flexible Multi-Robot Coordination

目的：本项目的目标是研究一套控制和通信技术，用于建立和维护多个协作移动的机器人之间的通信连接，以应对实际中不同的通信条件，以确保强大和灵活的多机器人协调。该方法是利用无线通信和机器人的移动性的特点，显着增加通信的覆盖范围和可靠性，并形成移动的robots.Intellectual merit之间的通信链路的机会：本研究解决了关键的挑战，在建立和维护协作移动的机器人之间的通信连接，这是由不稳定的通信条件和机器人和环境的动态性质。智能的优点在于变革性的发展和集成的新型分布式控制和通信技术的控制通信，多机器人运动，和无线信号搜索不稳定的通信条件和机器人/任务的限制。这些技术的综合应用将导致强大而有效的通信网络，高自由度的任务操作和探索，从而在多个协作机器人之间实现高度鲁棒和灵活的协调。更广泛的影响：更广泛的影响包括：1）通过解决建立和保持机器人之间的鲁棒通信连接的基本问题，促进多机器人系统的众多应用，并为基于它的各种研究课题提供基础; 2）开发新的课程材料，并在跨学科的背景下培训研究生和本科生; 3）为高中生和K-12教师和社区大学教师提供研究机会，并鼓励学生在工程和科学方面设定职业目标。

Objective:The objective of this project is to investigate a set of control and communication techniques for establishing and maintaining communication connections among multiple collaborating mobile robots, in response to varying communication conditions in practice, to ensure robust and flexible multi-robot coordination. The approach is to exploit the features of wireless communications and mobility of robots to significantly increase the coverage and reliability of communications and the chance of forming communication links among mobile robots.Intellectual merit:This research addresses the critical challenge in the establishment and maintenance of communication connections among collaborative mobile robots, which is imposed by unstable communication conditions and the dynamic nature of robots and environments. The intellectual merit lies in the transformative development and integration of novel distributed control and communication techniques for controlled communications, multi-robot motion, and wireless signal search under unstable communication conditions and robot/task constraints. The integrated application of these techniques will lead to robust and efficient communication networking, high-freedom task operation and exploration, and thus highly robust and flexible coordination among multiple collaborative robots.Broader impacts:The broader impacts include 1) facilitating numerous applications of multi-robot systems by solving the fundamental problem of establishing and maintaining robust communication connectivity among robots, and providing a foundation to various research topics based on it; 2) developing new course materials and training graduate and undergraduate students in a cross-disciplinary context; 3) providing research opportunities to high school students and to K-12 teachers and community college faculty, and encouraging students to set their career goals in engineering and science.