Wireless coverage optimization for robotic swarm in emergency scenario

In this paper a distributed strategy for the exploration of dangerous environment through a robot swarm is proposed. The robots support the exploration of an intervention team, who is wirelessly interconnected with the swarm. The wireless interconnections among the elements of the system are optimized during the exploration taking into account the behavior (i.e., the position and the movement) of the humans. To this end, a virtual spring mesh algorithm has been customized and experimentally validated on the Lego NXT platform. Preliminary results are reported and discussed to show the potentialities of the proposed method.