Connectivity-aware planning of search and rescue missions

In this paper, we deal with the problem of planning the activities of a team of mobile agents to maximize the performance of a mission, and, at the same time, enhancing the communication between them. We propose a novel approach based upon the use of connectivity directives, whose compliance is expected to translate into beneficial conditions for data exchange. Using the approach in the context of search and rescue missions, we conform a connectivity-aware planning, in which directives take the form of spatial relations among groups of agents. In the planning process, we let the user to establish the desired trade-off between connectivity provisioning and mission performance, which in turn results in mission plans that exhibit a balance between these two aspects. The evaluation indicates that, by using the connectivity-aware planning, we can greatly increase the quality of the communication at a very low expense of mission performance.