A maintenance scheme of communication link in mobile robot ad hoc networks based on potential field

Abstract

Maintaining communication link in mobile robot networks between task robots and a control center is very important in some urgent application occasions such as remote danger detections. To offer a reliable multi-hop communication link, a link maintaining scheme based on artificial potential field is presented. The scheme is achieved by a task robot and communication relay ones. The task robot performs predefined tasks, and relay ones are simple robots which form a communication relay chain. When robots move towards destination in formation, a kind of attractive force created by communication quality is added to traditional potential field, and relay robots follow the task robot and automatically stop at adequate locations to form a relay chain from the control station to the task robot. In order to increase relay usage efficiency, when some relays are replaced by other short cut relays, the redundant relays can be reused by initiating another moving toward specified location. Simulation results show that the scheme can provide a reliable multi-hop communication link, and that the communication connection can be obtained through minimal number of relays.