Connectivity Maintenance and Recovery for Multi-Robot Motion Planning

Abstract

Connectivity is crucial in many multi-robot applications, yet balancing connectivity maintenance and fleet traversability in obstacle-rich environments remains challenging. Reactive controllers based on control barrier functions can preserve connectivity when it is initially satisfied, but often struggle with deadlocks in cluttered environments. We propose a real-time Bézier-based constrained motion planning algorithm, namely MPC--CLF--CBF, that produces trajectories and control inputs concurrently, subject to high-order control barrier function and control Lyapunov function constraints. Our motion planner supports connectivity-aware navigation in cluttered workspaces and recovers connectivity from initially disconnected configurations and after temporary obstacle-induced separation; it also provides analytic continuous-time derivatives, facilitating its application to agile differentially flat systems such as quadrotors. In simulations with $4$--$12$ robots, it maintains $95.8$--$100\%$ graph-connected time at $20\%$ obstacle density, compared with $48.9$--$61.3\%$ for MPC--CBF, with no observed collisions. We further validate the planner in a physical experiment with $8$ Crazyflie nano-quadrotors.

8 pages, 3 figures. To appear in the Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2026), Pittsburgh, PA, USA