*1.4. Contributions*

This work tries to answer these research questions from the development of a novel multi-objective approach where the robots, when selecting their targets, are always considering travelling costs and the opportunity cost of keeping connected or regaining connectivity. A simple yet useful model for the signal strength and attenuation effects provide the robots with connectivity awareness. Thereupon, connectivity level measurements and path costs are considered together into a *task utility* function for finding solutions with a right balance between the benefit of visiting the closer targets and the usefulness of keeping the team connectivity level as high as possible.

For the sake of robustness, a decentralised approach is followed. Robots make decisions asynchronously addressing coordination implicitly through localisation and mapping data exchanging. The human operator is asked to use his application-field expertise to play a part in the task assessment process.

The main contributions of this proposal can be summarised as follows.
