Abstract
Area coverage and communication are fundamental concerns in networks of cooperating robots. The goal is to address the issue of how well a group of collaborating robots having a limited communication range is able to monitor a given geographical space. Typically, an area of interest is partitioned into smaller subareas, with each robot in charge of a given subarea. This gives rise to a communication network that allows robots to exchange information when they are sufficiently close to each other. To be effective, the system must be resilient, i.e., be able to recover from robot failures. In a recent paper Bereg et al. (J Comb Optim 36(2):365–391, 2018), the concept of k-resilience of a synchronized system was introduced as the cardinality of a smallest set of robots whose failure suffices to cause that at least k surviving robots operate without communication, thus entering a state of starvation. It was proven that the problem of computing the k-resilience is NP-hard in general. In this paper, we study several problems related to the resilience of a synchronized system with respect to coverage and communication on realistic topologies including grid and cycle configurations. The broadcasting resilience is the minimum number of robots whose removal may disconnect the network. The coverage resilience is the minimum number of robots whose removal may result in a non-covered subarea. We prove that the three resilience measures can be efficiently computed for these configurations.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
An illustration of this phenomenon is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64gKnefnXew.
References
Abdulla AEAA, Fadlullah ZMd, Nishiyama H, Kato N, Ono F, Miura R (2014) An optimal data collection technique for improved utility in uas-aided networks. In: 2014 IEEE conference on computer communications, INFOCOM 2014, pp 736–744
Alena O, Niels A, James C, Bruce G, Erwin P (2018) Optimization approaches for civil applications of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or aerial drones: a survey. Networks, to appear
Almeida A, Ramalho G, Santana H, Tedesco P, Menezes T, Corruble V, Chevaleyre Y (2004) Recent advances on multi-agent patrolling. In: Brazilian symposium on artificial intelligence. Springer, pp 474–483
Bereg S, Caraballo L-E, Díaz-Báñez J-M, Lopez MA (2018) Computing the \(k\)-resilience of a synchronized multi-robot system. J Comb Optim 36(2):365–391
Boesch F, Tindell R (1984) Circulants and their connectivities. J Graph Theory 8(4):487–499
Choset H (2001) Coverage for robotics-a survey of recent results. Ann Math Artif Intell 31(1–4):113–126
Clark CM, Rock SM, Latombe J-C (2003) Motion planning for multiple mobile robots using dynamic networks. In: Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation, ICRA’03, vol 3. IEEE, pp 4222–4227
Collins A, Czyzowicz J, Gasieniec L, Kosowski A, Kranakis E, Krizanc D, Martin R, Ponce OM (2013) Optimal patrolling of fragmented boundaries. In: Proceedings of the twenty-fifth annual ACM symposium on Parallelism in algorithms and architectures. ACM, pp 241–250
Czyzowicz J, Gasieniec L, Kosowski A, Kranakis E (2011) Boundary patrolling by mobile agents with distinct maximal speeds. In: European symposium on algorithms. Springer, pp 701–712
Czyzowicz J, Kosowski A, Kranakis E, Taleb N (2016) Patrolling trees with mobile robots. In: International symposium on foundations and practice of security. Springer, pp 331–344
Díaz-Báñez J-M, Caraballo L-E, Lopez M, Bereg S, Maza I, Ollero A (2015) The synchronization problem for information exchange between aerial robots under communication constraints. In: 2015 International conference on robotics and automation (ICRA). IEEE
Díaz-Báñez J-M, Caraballo L-E, Lopez M, Bereg S, Maza I, Ollero A (2017) A general framework for synchronizing a team of robots under communication constraints. IEEE Trans Robotics 33(4):748–755
Flocchini P, Santoro N, Viglietta G, Yamashita M (2016) Rendezvous with constant memory. Theor. Comput. Sci. 621:57–72
Galceran E, Carreras M (2013) A survey on coverage path planning for robotics. Robotics Auton Syst 61(12):1258–1276
Hamacher HW (1992) Combinatorial optimization models motivated by robotic assembly problems. In: Combinatorial optimization. Springer, pp 187–198
Hazon N, Kaminka GA (2008) On redundancy, efficiency, and robustness in coverage for multiple robots. Robotics Auton Syst 56(12):1102–1114
Henzinger MR, Rao S, Gabow HN (2000) Computing vertex connectivity: new bounds from old techniques. J Algorithms 34(2):222–250
Hsieh MA, Cowley A, Kumar V, Taylor CJ (2008) Maintaining network connectivity and performance in robot teams. J Field Robotics 25(1–2):111–131
Hwang S-I, Cheng S-T (2001) Combinatorial optimization in real-time scheduling: theory and algorithms. J Comb Optim 5(3):345–375
Kranakis E, Krizanc D (2015) Optimization problems in infrastructure security. In: International symposium on foundations and practice of security. Springer, pp 3–13
Lovász L (1993) Random walks on graphs. Comb Paul Erdos Eighty 2(1–46):4
Mazayev A, Correia N, Schütz G (2016) Data gathering in wireless sensor networks using unmanned aerial vehicles. Int J Wireless Inf Netw 23(4):297–309
Meijer PT (1991) Connectivities and diameters of circulant graphs. Master’s thesis, Simon Fraser University, 12
Patel R, Carron A, Bullo F (2016) The hitting time of multiple random walks. SIAM J Matrix Anal Appl 37(3):933–954
Roy N, Dudek G (2001) Collaborative robot exploration and rendezvous: algorithms, performance bounds and observations. Auton Robots 11(2):117–136
Tabachnikov S (2005) Geometry and billiards. Amer. Math. Soc, Providence
Tetali P, Winkler P (1991) On a random walk problem arising in self-stabilizing token management. In: Proceedings of the tenth annual ACM symposium on principles of distributed computing. ACM, pp 273–280
Winfield AFT (2000) Distributed sensing and data collection via broken ad hoc wireless connected networks of mobile robots. In: Distributed autonomous robotic systems, vol 4. Springer, pp 273–282
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
L. E. Caraballo: Funded by Spanish Government under Grant Agreement FPU14/04705.
This research has received funding from the projects GALGO (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, MTM2016-76272-R AEI/FEDER, UE) and CONNECT (European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 734922).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bereg, S., Brunner, A., Caraballo, LE. et al. On the robustness of a synchronized multi-robot system. J Comb Optim 39, 988–1016 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10878-020-00533-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10878-020-00533-z