Stability and Convergence of a Message-Loss-Tolerant Rendezvous Algorithm for Wireless Networked Robot Systems

Abstract

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.