Decentralized estimation of topology changes in wireless robotic networks

In this paper we present a novel decentralized technique to detect changes in the topology of a mobile robotic network. The network topology evolves due to the relative motion of the robots and the presence of obstacles in the environment. We consider that each robot is equipped with a chaotic oscillator whose state is propagated to the other robots through wireless communication. Under certain conditions, the states of the oscillators may synchronize, i.e., they converge on the same dynamical time evolution. The key idea of our approach is that by receiving and conveniently using an aggregate signal from the surrounding neighbors, each node may become able to detect changes in the local network topology. We introduce an adaptive strategy that each robot independently implements to: (i) estimate the net coupling from all the oscillators in its neighborhood, and (ii) synchronize the state of its oscillator with the others. We show that by using this strategy, synchronization can be attained and changes of the network topology can be detected. Numerical simulations validate the proposed methodology.