A Survey of Distributed Optimization Methods for Multi-Robot Systems

Understand

Distributed optimization consists of multiple computation nodes working together to minimize a common objective function through local computation iterations and network-constrained communication steps.

• In the context of robotics, distributed optimization algorithms can enable multi-robot systems to accomplish tasks in the absence of centralized coordination.
• We present a general framework for applying distributed optimization as a module in a robotics pipeline.
• We survey several classes of distributed optimization algorithms and assess their practical suitability for multi-robot applications.