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，以建立和维护多个协作移动机器人之间的通信连接，以响应实践中不断变化的通信条件，以确保健壮和灵活的多机器人协调。该方法是利用机器人的无线通信和移动性的特点，显著提高通信的覆盖范围和可靠性，以及移动机器人之间形成通信链路的机会。智力优势：本研究解决了由不稳定的通信条件和机器人和环境的动态性质所带来的在协作移动机器人之间建立和维护通信连接的关键挑战。其智能优势在于对新型分布式控制和通信技术的变革性开发和集成，用于在不稳定的通信条件和机器人/任务约束下进行受控通信、多机器人运动和无线信号搜索。这些技术的综合应用将导致健壮而高效的通信网络，高自由度的任务操作和探索，从而在多个协作机器人之间进行高度健壮和灵活的协调。广泛的影响包括：1)通过解决在机器人之间建立和保持健壮的通信连接的根本问题，促进多机器人系统的大量应用，并为基于此的各种研究课题提供基础；2)开发新的课程材料，在跨学科的背景下培养研究生和本科生；3)为高中生、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他们的职业目标。

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.