Network Interference on Cooperative Mobile Robots Consensus

Abstract

In this work we present the integration between a robot cooperative control strategy and a wireless network simulated with OMNeT++. We use a consensus control strategy to carry out a rendez-vous task where information is shared among a group of robots. These robots are then simulated in a MANET environment with a TDMA-based protocol to minimize message collisions. We consider two cases in this work: a fixed pre-determined topology, which does not accept new links, and a dynamic topology that creates new links as robots get within communication range. We show the impact of the network on the control strategy performing a rendez-vous task, considering both topologies. In particular, there is a considerable degradation of the rendez-vous task if care is not taken when deploying the cooperative control strategy, e.g. the initial message collisions due to desynchronized slot start. Finally, we compare these simulation results with those from a Matlab implementation of the control strategy using a typical simplified network model. The difference reveals the importance of using more accurate network models such as those of OMNeT++.