# Decentralized Global Connectivity Maintenance for Multi-Robot Navigation: A Reinforcement Learning Approach

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.08536 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.08536/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Sep 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Trust Region Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.05477/) (2015)
- [OpenAI Gym](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.01540/) (2016)
- [Multi-Agent Actor-Critic for Mixed Cooperative-Competitive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02275/) (2017)
- [Domain Randomization for Transferring Deep Neural Networks from Simulation to the Real World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06907/) (2017)
- [Soft Actor-Critic Algorithms and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05905/) (2018)
- [Constrained Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.10528/) (2017)
- [Learning Complex Dexterous Manipulation with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.10087/) (2017)
- [Learning to Communicate with Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.06676/) (2016)
- [Leveraging Demonstrations for Deep Reinforcement Learning on Robotics Problems with Sparse Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.08817/) (2017)
- [End-to-End Safe Reinforcement Learning through Barrier Functions for Safety-Critical Continuous Control Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08792/) (2019)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Agent Systems: A Review of Challenges, Solutions and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.11794/) (2018)
- [Decentralized Non-communicating Multiagent Collision Avoidance with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.07845/) (2016)
- [Motion Planning Among Dynamic, Decision-Making Agents with Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.01956/) (2018)
- [Towards Optimally Decentralized Multi-Robot Collision Avoidance via Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.10082/) (2017)
- [Regularizing Action Policies for Smooth Control with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.06644/) (2020)
- [From Perception to Decision: A Data-driven Approach to End-to-end Motion Planning for Autonomous Ground Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.07910/) (2016)
- [Reinforced Imitation: Sample Efficient Deep Reinforcement Learning for Map-less Navigation by Leveraging Prior Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.07095/) (2018)
- [Multi-objective Compositions for Collision-Free Connectivity Maintenance in Teams of Mobile Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06887/) (2016)
- [End-to-end Decentralized Multi-robot Navigation in Unknown Complex Environments via Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.01713/) (2019)
- [Connectivity Maintenance: Global and Optimized approach through Control Barrier Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10178/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Robots as Tokens: Unified Diffusion Transformer for Coordinated Multi-Robot Trajectory Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.15550/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The problem of multi-robot navigation of connectivity maintenance is challenging in multi-robot applications. This work investigates how to navigate a multi-robot team in unknown environments while maintaining connectivity. We propose a reinforcement learning (RL) approach to develop a decentralized policy, which is shared among multiple robots. Given range sensor measurements and the positions of other robots, the policy aims to generate control commands for navigation and preserve the global connectivity of the robot team. We incorporate connectivity concerns into the RL framework as constraints and introduce behavior cloning to reduce the exploration complexity of policy optimization. The policy is optimized with all transition data collected by multiple robots in random simulated scenarios. We validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach by comparing different combinations of connectivity constraints and behavior cloning. We also show that our policy can generalize to unseen scenarios in both simulation and holonomic robots experiments.