Multi-Robot Patrolling in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Bounded Cycle Coverage

Abstract

Patrolling is mainly used in situations where the need of repeatedly visiting certain places is critical. In this paper, we consider a deployment of a wireless sensor network (WSN) that cannot be fully meshed because of the distance or obstacles. Several robots are then in charge of getting close enough to the nodes in order to connect to them, and perform a patrol to collect all the data in time. We discuss the problem of multi-robot patrolling within the constrained wireless networking settings. We show that this is fundamentally a problem of vertex coverage with bounded simple cycles (CBSC). We offer a formalization of the CBSC problem and prove it is NP-hard and at least as hard as the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). Then, we provide and analyze heuristics relying on clusterings and geometric techniques. The performances of our solutions are assessed in regards to networking parameters, robot energy, but also to random and particular graph models.