Privacy-Preserving Coverage Control for Multiagent Systems with Limited Communication Ranges

This work investigates the coverage control problem for networked mobile agents on a circle, considering both limited communication ranges and privacy preservation requirements. The objective of the agents is to cooperatively minimize the coverage cost function, which is the longest time required to arrive at any point on the circle from the optimal locations of the agents. A new confidential interaction protocol is proposed to drive the multiagent system to the optimal configuration. Moreover, the process required to implement the confidential interaction protocol is provided to handle the limited communication ranges during coverage tasks. Under the privacy-preserving coverage control law, it is proved that networked mobile agents with limited communication ranges can be driven to optimal configuration with guaranteed privacy preservation. Finally, a simulation example is provided. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.