Time optimal control for a mobile robot with a communication objective

The paper proposes control design strategies that minimize the time required by a mobile robot to accomplish a certain task (reach a target) while transmitting/receiving a message. The message delivery is done over a wireless network, and we account for path-loss while disregarding any shadowing phenomena, i.e., the transmission rate depends only on the distance to the wireless antenna. First, using the Pontryagin maximum principle we design a minimal-time control for the simplified robot dynamics described by a single integrator. Next, we show how we can use these theoretical results to efficiently control more complicated non-holonomic dynamics. Numerical simulations illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.(c) 2022 International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (IMACS). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper proposes control design strategies to minimize the time required by a mobile robot to accomplish a certain task while transmitting/receiving a message. It first designs a minimal-time control for simplified robot dynamics using the Pontryagin maximum principle, and then demonstrates how these results can be used to efficiently control more complicated non-holonomic dynamics.