Abstract
Cooperative mobile robot applications enable robots to perform tasks that are more complex than those that each single robot can perform alone. In this application context, communication networks play a very important role, as they have to cope with strict requirements (e.g., in terms of mobility, reliability, and bounded latencies). Recent cooperative robot applications foresee the support of low datarate communication technologies, that provide, among other benefits, lower energy consumption and easy integration with Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Unfortunately, the state-of-the-art solutions either entail high costs and complexity or are not suitable for low data rate communications. Consequently, novel solutions for cooperating robots are required. For this reason, this paper presents RoboMAC, a new MAC protocol for mobile cooperating robots that enables the integration of robots with WSNs, supports mobility and real-time communications, and provides high scalability. The paper also presents a proof-of-concept implementation that proves the feasibility of the RoboMAC protocol on COTS devices.
Highlights
Modern automation applications provide smart devices, e.g., sensors and actuators, with the capability to process data in a distributed way, enabling the possibility of more complex industrial applications
Mobile robots play a vital role in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and huge research efforts have been devoted on mobile robots applications [21,22] during the last decades
This paper investigates an innovative protocol for cooperative mobile robot applications suitable for low datarate communications and able to cope with all the requirements of the considered applications
Summary
Modern automation applications provide smart devices, e.g., sensors and actuators, with the capability to process data in a distributed way, enabling the possibility of more complex industrial applications. Several works [15,16,17] proposed cooperating robots as mobile nodes in low datarate Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). Such nodes are commonly based on the IEEE 802.11 technology [18,19]. This paper builds upon the approach proposed in [20], which outlines the design of a low datarate protocol for cooperating mobile robot applications requiring. The paper presents a proof-of-concept implementation on real COTS devices to demonstrate the protocol feasibility on mobile robot applications and provides some experimental and analytical assessments.
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