  This paper investigates the controller synthesis problem for a multi-agent
system (MAS) with intermittent communication. We adopt a relay-explorer scheme,
where a mobile relay agent with absolute position sensors switches among a set
of explorers with relative position sensors to provide intermittent state
information. We model the MAS as a switched system where the explorers'
dynamics can be either fully-actuated or underactuated. The objective of the
explorers is to reach approximate consensus to a predetermined goal region. To
guarantee the stability of the switched system and the approximate consensus of
the explorers, we derive maximum dwell-time conditions to constrain the length
of time each explorer goes without state feedback (from the relay agent).
Furthermore, the relay agent needs to satisfy practical constraints such as
charging its battery and staying in specific regions of interest. Both the
maximum dwell-time conditions and these practical constraints can be expressed
by metric temporal logic (MTL) specifications. We iteratively compute the
optimal control inputs for the relay agent to satisfy the MTL specifications,
while guaranteeing stability and approximate consensus of the explorers. We
implement the proposed method on a case study with the CoppeliaSim robot
simulator.
