2 research outputs found

    A Parallel Distributed Strategy for Arraying a Scattered Robot Swarm

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    We consider the problem of organizing a scattered group of nn robots in two-dimensional space, with geometric maximum distance DD between robots. The communication graph of the swarm is connected, but there is no central authority for organizing it. We want to arrange them into a sorted and equally-spaced array between the robots with lowest and highest label, while maintaining a connected communication network. In this paper, we describe a distributed method to accomplish these goals, without using central control, while also keeping time, travel distance and communication cost at a minimum. We proceed in a number of stages (leader election, initial path construction, subtree contraction, geometric straightening, and distributed sorting), none of which requires a central authority, but still accomplishes best possible parallelization. The overall arraying is performed in O(n)O(n) time, O(n2)O(n^2) individual messages, and O(nD)O(nD) travel distance. Implementation of the sorting and navigation use communication messages of fixed size, and are a practical solution for large populations of low-cost robots
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