  Exploration of extreme or remote environments such as Mars is often
recognized as an opportunity for multi-robot systems. However, this poses
challenges for maintaining robust inter-robot communication without preexisting
infrastructure. It may be that robots can only share information when they are
physically in close proximity with each other. At the same time, atmospheric
phenomena such as dust devils are poorly understood and characterization of
their electrostatic properties is of scientific interest. We perform a
comparative analysis of two multi-robot communication strategies: a distributed
approach, with pairwise intermittent rendezvous, and a centralized, fixed base
station approach. We also introduce and evaluate the effectiveness of an
algorithm designed to predict the location and strength of electrostatic
anomalies, assuming robot proximity. Using an agent-based simulation, we assess
the performance of these strategies in a 2D grid cell representation of a
Martian environment. Results indicate that a decentralized rendezvous system
consistently outperforms a fixed base station system in terms of exploration
speed and in reducing the risk of data loss. We also find that inter-robot data
sharing improves performance when trying to predict the location and strength
of an electrostatic anomaly. These findings indicate the importance of
appropriate communication strategies for efficient multi-robot science
missions.
