Higher-Order Optimal Deployment With Self-Triggered Coordination

This paper studies a k-order coverage control problem where a network of agents must deploy themselves over a desired area. The objective is to deploy all the agents in a decentralized manner such that the coverage performance of the network is maximized. Unlike many prior works that consider multi-agent deployment, we explicitly consider applications where more than one agent may be required to service an event that occurs in the domain. The proposed method ensures that the agents move to an optimal configuration while simultaneously relaxing the requirement of constant communication among the agents. In order to achieve the stated goals, a self-triggered coordination method is developed that both determines how agents should move without having to continuously acquire information from other agents, as well as when to acquire new information. Simulation results illustrate that the self-triggered algorithm reduces the amount of communication necessary to accomplish the deployment task while not having to sacrifice performance in meeting the goal.