Sampling and and communication: impact on formation control in heterogeneous multi-robot systems

This work presents the analysis of the sampling and communication frequencies in a multi -robot system (MRS) and its effect over the temporal performance and computational load. The experimental system is composed of mobile robots (the Khepera IV), and a type of aerial robots, the Crazyflie 2.1. The analysis is performed for the formation control of the MRS from initial conditions to a desired formation, which is defined in terms of relative distances between agents. Three scenarios regarding the control architecture are evaluated: centralized, distributed in ROS 2, and distributed onboard the robot. The minimum operating frequency for periodic sampling is determined, and an event -based sampling protocol is presented to reduce the number of transmitted messages. In this case, the optimal constant threshold is determined that, with a temporal performance equivalent to the best periodic sampling, obtains a reduction in the number of samples of around 80 %.