Neighbor Topology for Dynamic Plane Coverage in Swarm Leading Control

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to solve the dynamic plane coverage problem by the movement of multiple robots, for example, sprinkling water to a large field by several vehicles or aircrafts, in which all of the points in the field should be covered by the robots in an almost equal density. One of the ways to solve it is the swarm leading control method, in which one of the robots, called a target, moves along a path in the field, and all the other robots move around the target with a fixed distance. In the process, the topology of the robots affects to the efficiency of the dynamic plane coverage problem. If the topology is a tight one, the swarm can be stable but the coverage area can be limited in a small area. On the other hand, if it is a loose one, an opposite thing can be happened. In this paper, the relation between the topology and the efficiency is discussed numerically.