Hierarchical Distributed Control for Global Network Integrity Preservation in Multirobot Systems

In this paper, we address a novel hierarchical distributed control (HDC) strategy for networked multirobot systems (MRSs). This strategy is developed on a geometric approach without requiring estimation of algebraic connectivity. It is originally based upon behavioral control, but upgraded by distributed node control with a mobility constraint for global network integrity preservation and distributed connectivity control with a local connectivity minimization strategy for network coverage expansion. Thanks to properties of HDC, a networked MRS is capable of achieving high performance with cooperative tasks. We have examined and evaluated our proposed method in both simulations with up to 100 simulated robots and real-world experiments with up to 14 real robots.