Abstract Limited communication range, together with mobility of robots, makes it crucial to design the control plans such that connectivity of a multi-robot network is maintained. Recently, many local and global connectivity maintenance schemes have been proposed to preserve connectivity of a robotic network. The traditional local connectivity maintenance method (LCM) is known to preserve every existing link, even though some of the existing connections might not be necessary for maintaining a path between each pair of robots, which is the aim of global connectivity maintenance (GCM) methods. However, the flexibility of movement provided by the global method costs restriction on speed and bandwidth. In this paper, a modified local connectivity maintenance method is provided to gain more flexibility of movement, while preserving the properties and simplicity of a local method. The proposed method is based on traditional local connectivity maintenance equipped with a basic operation to exchange the neighbors between two adjacent robots. Permutation of robots could be beneficial in many robotic applications such as exchanging the leader role in a V-formed robotic group or providing a path for a robot to reach its desired position while preserving the networks connectivity.

中文翻译：

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有限范围机器人网络中的连通性保持节点置换局部方法

摘要 有限的通信范围以及机器人的移动性使得设计控制计划以保持多机器人网络的连通性变得至关重要。最近，已经提出了许多本地和全局连接维护方案来保持机器人网络的连接。已知传统的本地连接维护方法 (LCM) 会保留每个现有链接，即使某些现有连接可能不是维护每对机器人之间的路径所必需的，这是全局连接维护 (GCM) 方法的目标. 但是，全局方法提供的移动灵活性会限制速度和带宽。在本文中，提供了一种改进的本地连接维护方法以获得更大的移动灵活性，同时保留局部方法的特性和简单性。所提出的方法基于传统的本地连接维护，配备了一个基本操作来交换两个相邻机器人之间的邻居。机器人的排列在许多机器人应用中可能是有益的，例如在 V 型机器人组中交换领导角色或为机器人提供一条路径以到达其所需位置，同时保持网络连接。