Communication enhanced navigation strategies for teams of mobile agents

In multi-agent systems engaged in cooperative activities there is an apparent trade-off between the complexity of the individual agents, their sensing capabilities and communication required for accomplishment of particular tasks. One of the main computationally intensive components which affects the complexity of the overall system is the acquisition and maintenance of the environment model where the agents reside. In this paper, in the context of foraging and coordinated traversal task, we will examine control strategies that in the absence of the global model of the environment can substantially improve the performance of the team using additional sensing and communication capabilities. In one case the coordinated strategy is motivated by an ant trail following behavior while in another case the line of sight information is used to constrain the movement of individual agents guaranteeing shorter total traversal times.