Stability and Convergence of a Message-Loss-Tolerant Rendezvous Algorithm for Wireless Networked Robot Systems
Sabato Manfredi, Enrico Natalizio, Claudio Pascariello, Nicola Roberto Zema · IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems · 2020
This article considers the problem of swarm rendezvous when robots exchange local coordination messages through an unreliable wireless communication network (i.e., message-loss occurs). First, a discrete-time second-order consensus algorithm is provided to deal with the effects of unreliable channels on wireless networked robot (WNR) systems, and drive the robots to a given geometric formation. Then, necessary and sufficient conditions for the controlled WNR to converge to a desired formation, even in the presence of messages loss, are formulated and simulatively validated. The proposed conditions provide to the WNR designer a minimal topology connectivity requirement, and a relation among algorithm step-size and control gains to be fulfilled for guaranteeing swarm rendezvous.