Distributed Circumferential Coverage Control in Non-Convex Annulus Environments

Abstract: It has long been a prominent challenge in multi-agent systems to achieve distributed coverage of non-convex annulus environments while ensuring workload equalization among agents. To address this challenge, a distributed circumferential coverage control formulation is developed in this note by constructing a Riemannian metric for the navigation in the non-convex subregion while avoiding collisions with the region boundary. In addition, a distributed partition law is designed to balance the workload on the entire coverage region by endowing each agent with a virtual partition bar that slides along the inner boundary of coverage region. Theoretical analysis is conducted to ensure the exponential convergence of workload partition and asymptotic convergence of each agent towards the local optimum in its subregion. Finally, a case study is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed coverage control approach.