Robust Distributed Rendezvous Using Multiple Robots with Variable Range Radars

This paper considers multi-robot systems, such that each robot has a radar for detecting its neighbor robots. We consider a practical scenario in which a radar sensor contains measurement noise, and the environmental disturbance generates process noise in a robot's maneuvering. We consider a 3D scenario such that the network can be split initially. For instance, complete failures of one or more robots can split the network. Considering 3D environments, the goal of our paper is to let all robots rendezvous in a distributed manner so that the network connectivity can be recovered even after the network is split. Robust distributed rendezvous control is designed so that the network connectivity is maintained (or recovered) during the maneuvering of a robot. To recover the network connectivity, we adaptively control the robot's radar footprint by increasing the transmission power level (adjust the amplifier in the transmitter). To the best of our knowledge, this paper is novel in applying a radar with a variable sensing range in order to make all robots rendezvous in 3D environments. We address MATLAB simulations to demonstrate the outperformance of our rendezvous approach with variable range radars by comparing it with the state-of-the-art in multi-robot rendezvous controls.