Self-Triggered Distributed K-Order Coverage Control

A
k
-order coverage control problem is studied, where a network of agents must be deployed over a desired area. The objective is to deploy all the agents in a decentralized manner such that a certain coverage performance metric is minimized. Unlike many prior works that consider multiagent deployment, we explicitly consider applications where more than one agent may be required to serve an event that randomly occurs anywhere in the domain. The proposed method ensures that the distributed agents autonomously cover the area while simultaneously relaxing the requirement of constant communication among agents. In order to achieve the stated goals, a self-triggered coordination strategy is developed which determines how agents should move without having to continuously acquire information, as well as exactly when to communicate and receive new information. Through analysis, the proposed strategy is shown to provide asymptotic convergence similar to that of continuous or periodic methods. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can reduce the number of messages exchanged while accomplishing the deployment task.