AID: Assistant-based approach for K-Leader network formation in multi-robot systems

Abstract

In isolated environments lacking communication infrastructure, a scattered team of robots with limited commu-nication range must form networks in an energy-efficient and timely manner. This work address the offline network formation problem for multi-robot systems with limited communication range. We propose an Assistant-based Information Dissemination (AID) algorithm that leverages assistant assignment to efficiently propagate information. Our formulation generalizes to ĸ-leaders disseminating distinct information. We compare AID and five variations against two baselines (no assistants and full knowledge of leader identities). We test the methods in a simulated environ-ments with fixed size and varying number of robots and leaders. Results demonstrate AID's improvements over the lower baseline in both distance traveled and communication counts, validating its efficiency.