Nexus: Communication-Aware Role Differentiation for Adaptive Multi-Robot Exploration

摘要

Autonomous exploration aims to navigate and map complex, hard-to-reach environments. To achieve effective co-ordination, robots rely heavily on reliable communication for real-time data sharing, collaborative decision-making, and synchronized movement. However, such missions are often hindered by significant communication challenges. Factors such as signal attenuation, fluctuating link quality, and intermittent connectivity often arise due to occlusion, increased distances, and radio interference. These uncertainties can lead to delayed or incomplete data transmission, ultimately reducing the exploration efficiency.This paper presents Nexus (Networked Elastic eXploration via Unified Swarm), a self-organizing robot swarm specifically designed to address communication uncertainties. As a decentralized and self-sufficient swarm framework, Nexus introduces two key innovations. First, Nexus enables proactive role differentiation, allowing robots to adaptively switch between "explorer" and "messenger" based on factors such as spatial distribution, predicted communication quality, and swarm topology. Second, Nexus pioneers the use of signal traces and local environmental sensing to predict communication channel conditions in a robot’s vicinity. This forward-looking capability guides strategic role assignments and task allocation. Integrating communication-aware decisions into path planning, Nexus enhances exploration efficiency by over 19.5% and significantly reduces instances of robot disconnection compared with SOTA methods, as demonstrated through extensive real-world and simulated experiments.