Distributed Trajectory Design for Underwater Multi-Robot Relay Networks

Abstract

Underwater real-time video streaming is a challenging problem due to the limited bandwidth of acoustic communications. Although underwater optical communication promises high data rates, its performance is limited by the short communication range. This paper employs a multi-robot system to form a multi-hop relay network for high-speed long-range underwater communication, which can be used for underwater real-time monitoring. The impact of dynamic underwater environment on wireless optical communication is considered. A centralized optimization-based solution is derived by considering the existence of a powerful controller. Then, a distributed low-complexity algorithm is designed, which can also be adaptive to dynamic underwater environmental change. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated in various underwater environments. The results show that the distributed algorithm can reliably obtain optimal trajectories and locations for underwater robots without knowing global environmental information.