GMM-Based Time-Varying Coverage Control
In coverage control problems that involve time-varying density functions, the coverage control law depends on spatial integrals of the time evolution of the density function. The latter is often neglected, replaced with an upper bound or calculated as a numerical approximation of the spatial integrals involved. In this paper, we consider a special case of time-varying density functions modeled as Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) that evolve with time via a set of time-varying sources (with known corresponding velocities). By imposing this structure, we obtain an efficient time-varying coverage controller that fully incorporates the time evolution of the density function. We show that the induced trajectories under our control law minimise the overall coverage cost. We elicit the structure of the proposed controller and compare it with a classical time-varying coverage controller, against which we benchmark the coverage performance in simulation. Furthermore, we highlight that the computationally efficient and distributed nature of the proposed control law makes it ideal for multi-vehicle robotic applications involving time-varying coverage control problems. We employ our method in plume monitoring using a swarm of drones. In an experimental field trial we show that drones guided by the proposed controller are able to track a simulated time-varying chemical plume in a distributed manner.
Code (0)
등록된 구현이 없습니다.
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
Time-Varying Coverage Control: A Distributed Tracker-Planner MPC Framework
Time-varying coverage control addresses the challenge of coordinating multiple agents covering an environment where regions of interest change over time. This problem has broad applications, including the deployment of a…
Collision AvoidanceOnline Learning and Coverage of Unknown Fields Using Random-Feature Gaussian Processes
This paper proposes a framework for multi-robot systems to perform simultaneous learning and coverage of a domain of interest characterized by an unknown and potentially time-varying density function. To overcome the lim…
Gaussian ProcessesDistributed Coverage Control of Multi-Agent Networks with Guaranteed Collision Avoidance in Cluttered Environments
We propose a distributed control algorithm for a multi-agent network whose agents deploy over a cluttered region in accordance with a time-varying coverage density function while avoiding collisions with all obstacles th…
Collision AvoidanceDisentangled Control of Multi-Agent Systems
This paper develops a general framework with convergence guarantees for multi-agent control synthesis, which applies to a wide range of problems, including those with time-varying objective functions. The proposed framew…
On the Convergence of Density-Based Predictive Control for Multi-Agent Non-Uniform Area Coverage
This paper presents Density-based Predictive Control (DPC), a novel multi-agent control strategy for efficient non-uniform area coverage, grounded in optimal transport theory. In large-scale scenarios such as search and …