Higher order mobile coverage control with application to localization
For multi-sensor systems requiring redundancy for localization, this work extends coverage control to higher order partitions, though it is an incremental extension of existing methods.
This paper addresses coverage control problems where multiple sensors are needed per cell, such as in target localization. It introduces a gradient-based controller using higher order Voronoi partitions that achieves local equilibrium in a distributed manner, with convergence related to the Lloyd algorithm.
Most current results on coverage control using mobile sensors require that one partitioned cell is associated with precisely one sensor. In this paper, we consider a class of coverage control problems involving higher order Voronoi partitions, motivated by applications where more than one sensor is required to monitor and cover one cell. Such applications are frequent in scenarios requiring the sensors to localize targets. We introduce a framework depending on a coverage performance function incorporating higher order Voronoi cells and then design a gradient-based controller which allows the multi-sensor system to achieve a local equilibrium in a distributed manner. The convergence properties are studied and related to Lloyd algorithm. We study also the extension to coverage of a discrete set of points. In addition, we provide a number of real world scenarios where our framework can be applied. Simulation results are also provided to show the controller performance.