An Evaluation Method of Local Communication System in Many Mobile Robots. Performance Comparison with Global Communication.

Abstract

This paper aims to give an analytical view on what kind of inter-robot communication to use for cooperation in distributed mobile robotic systems. The efficiency of local and global communication is compared based on the analysis of information transmission time to multiple robots. Using local communication, the information about a specific task is diffused between robots gradually. We analyze this diffusion and derive the transmission time required for necessary robots to obtain the information. Global communication by time-division access is also analyzed to compare the transmission time. The analysis concludes that local communication is more effective than global one in environments where cooperative tasks are executed by multiple mobile robots in a distributed manner.