Asynchronous Distributed Event-Triggered Coordination for Multi-Agent Coverage Control

Abstract: This paper re-visits a multi-agent deployment problem where agents are restricted from requesting information from other agents as well as sending acknowledgments when information is received. These communication constraints relax the assumptions of instantaneous communication and synchronous actions by agents (request and response actions). In this paper, we propose a fully asynchronous communication aware solution to the multi-agent deployment problem that uses an event-triggered broadcasting strategy. Unlike all existing triggered solutions, our event-triggered broadcasting algorithm relies on agents to decide when to broadcast (push) information to others in the network without the need for a response from other agents. In addition, the proposed strategy determines how best to move when up-to-date information is unavailable and cannot be requested. The algorithm is capable of achieving similar levels of performance to that of a continuous or periodic strategy. Our solution is proven to achieve asymptotic convergence and simulation results are provided to demonstrate that the proposed event-triggered broadcasting algorithm can achieve an adequate level of performance under the communication constraints.