Cooperative Sensing and Distributed Control of a Diffusion Process Using Centroidal Voronoi Tessellations

Thispaperconsidershowtouseagroupofrobotstosenseandcontroladiffusionprocess.Thediffusionprocessismodeledbyapartialdifferentialequation(PDE),whichisabothspatiallyandtemporallyvariantsystem.Therobotscanserveasmobilesensors,actuators,orboth.CentroidalVoronoiTessellationsbasedcoveragecontrolalgorithmisproposedforthecooperativesensingtask.Forthediffusioncontrolproblem,thispaperconsiderssprayingcontrolviaagroupofnetworkedmobilerobotsequippedwithchemicalneutralizers,knownassmartmobilesprayersoractuators,inadomainofinteresthavingstaticmeshsensornetworkforconcentrationsensing.ThispaperalsointroducestheinformationsharingandconsensusstrategywhenusingcentroidalVoronoitessellationsalgorithmtocontroladiffusionprocess.Theinformationissharednotonlyonwheretospraybutalsoonhowmuchtosprayamongthemobileactuators.BenefitsfromusingCVTandinformationconsensusseekingforsensingandcontrolofadiffusionprocessaredemonstratedinsimulationresults.