Distributed Map-Merging-Free Multi-Robot Positioning for Creating a Connected Network

We consider a set of static towers with communication capabilities, but not within range of each other, i.e., sparsely positioned in an environment with obstacles that degrade the communication signal, e.g., emergency teams in areas where connectivity has been lost. We address the problem of deploying mobile robots, initially not necessarily within range of each other or of the static towers, to be communication gateways among the towers. The robots do not know the environment, the towers positions, nor their own initial position in global coordinates. We first discuss the challenges of the domain. We then contribute our distributed algorithm, where robots share connectivity information without merging maps, acquire information through their navigation, and heuristically plan their exploration. The robots analyze their own accumulated knowledge, and determine if a positioning plan exists to achieve the joint connectivity goal. We introduce different navigation heuristics. We illustrate our algorithm in simulation and compare the efficiency of the proposed heuristics. We apply the most promising heuristic in a variety of realistic indoor scenarios, demonstrating its efficacy.