In these experiments we see the effect of executing the communication-preserving (CP) behavior on a team of robots. We have a simple task that involves 4 robots going from their start location to a single goal location with varying amounts of obstacles. We run each experiment twice, one using robots executing the CP behavior and another using control robots which do not execute the behavior. We then vary the amount of obstacles (no coverage, 6% coverage, 12% coverage) and see how communication is disturbed over time. All 4 robots are spaced around 20 meters apart in an arena of XX by YY. The experiments were run until all the robots reached the goal.
The communication preserving behavior is composed of two parts. The first part calculates a 'communications center of mass' in which the robots query the network for the locations of any robots they currently can communicate with and calculate the center of communications by averaging the positions of the robots. The positions are weighted by the number of hops taken to reach a particular robot which in effect moves the center of communications towards the more communicationally distant robot. The center of communications is then treated as a comfort zone in which the robots, based on several parameters, are attracted to. The second part of the behavior is a modified obstacle avoidance behavior. This behavior takes the center of communications and modifies the avoidance vector such that the robots have a tendency to avoid the obstacles in a way which will preserve communications links.
The following graphs were generated for each experiment.
0% Obstacles 6% Obstacles 12% Obstacles CP Behavior Control Robots CP Behavior Control Robots CP Behavior Control Robots Connecitivity Over Time - Minimum, Mean, and Maximum direct connectivity of the robots on the team over time. XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX Network Partitions - How many partitions there are in the network over time. XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX Direct Connections Per Robot - How many direct connections each robot has over time. XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX