Exploiting a meeting channel to interconnect mobile robots

Abstract

The deployment of a fleet of collaborating mobile entities is at the heart of numerous applications, such as transportation of luggage in airports or search and rescue operations. In this paper, we describe an architecture where each mobile operates on its own radio channel, in order to allow the coordinator of each mobile to manage its sensors and actuators without interferences from other mobiles. We propose that mobiles meet periodically on a common channel in order to collaborate. We detail the key points of our architecture: the discovery of neighbor mobiles, the generic addressing used to identify devices on mobiles, and the MAC and routing protocols involved. Then, we present the results of our extensive simulations on a simple scenario. Our results show that our architecture can allow mobile entities to communicate efficiently.