On Resilience and Heterogeneity in Robotic Networks

This chapter introduces a series of definitions, metrics, and theory related to heterogeneity and resilience in the context of multi-robotic systems. It presents a case study based on the containment formation control problem for a group of homogeneous and heterogeneous agents. The chapter considers that system failures or adversarial attacks affect a robot such that it communicates incorrect information and on a global level prevents achievement of the team's task. It discusses how heterogeneity has been defined or categorized in the context of multi-agent robotic systems. The variety and disparity capabilities of heterogeneous agents greatly increase their resilience and ability to successfully accomplish complex tasks. The effects of incorporating heterogeneity and/or resilience as design variables of a multi-agent system have been mostly unexplored in the literature. A better understanding of how heterogeneity can be analyzed can help to find the range of missions that an intelligent multi-agent system can or cannot accomplish.