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This paper presents a theoretical framework for the design and analysis of gradient descent-based algorithms for coverage control tasks involving robot swarms. We adopt a multiscale approach to analysis and design to ensure consistency of the algorithms in the large-scale limit. First, we represent the macroscopic configuration of the swarm as a probability measure and formulate the macroscopic coverage task as the minimization of a convex objective function over probability measures. We then construct a macroscopic dynamics for swarm coverage, which takes the form of a proximal descent scheme in the L 2 -Wasserstein space. Our analysis exploits the generalized geodesic convexity of the coverage objective function, proving convergence in the L 2 -Wasserstein sense to the target probability measure. We then obtain a consistent gradient descent algorithm in the Euclidean space that is implementable by a finite collection of agents, via a "variational" discretization of the macroscopic coverage objective function. We establish the convergence properties of the gradient descent and its behavior in the continuous-time and large-scale limits. Furthermore, we establish a connection with well-known Lloyd-based algorithms, seen as a particular class of algorithms within our framework, and demonstrate our results via numerical experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a class of optimization problems is investigated, where the objective function is the sum of N convex functions viewed as local functions and the constraints are N nonidentical closed convex sets. Additionally, it is aimed to solve the considered optimization problem in a distributed manner and thus a sequence of time-varying unbalanced directed graphs is introduced first to depict the information connection topologies. Then, the novel push-sum based constrained optimization algorithm (PSCOA) is developed, where the new gradient descent-like method is applied to settle the involved closed convex set constraints. Furthermore, the rigorous convergence analysis is shown under some standard and common assumptions and it is proved that the developed distributed discrete-time algorithm owns a convergence rate of O ( ln t t ) in general case. Specially, the convergence rate of O ( 1 t ) can be further obtained under the assumption that at least one objective function is strongly convex. Finally, simulation results are given to demonstrate the validity of the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]