A Design Method of Optimal Communication Area in Multiple Mobile Robot System

This paper presents a method for optimal design of local communication area. Despite many studies of local communication for multiple mobile robots, communication area has not been designed based on mathematical analysis, but on only time-consuming simulations of many-robot communication. We therefore analyzed the efficiency of information transmission, and derived the optimal communication area which minimizes the information transmission time to multiple robots. This optimization mainly consists of two steps. First, we derive the“information transmission probability”for various task models. And next, as the evaluation function to minimize, the information transmission time is represented using the derived information transmission probability. The analytical results are also verified by computer simulations of many-robot communication.

[1]  Leonard Kleinrock,et al.  Optimal Transmission Ranges for Randomly Distributed Packet Radio Terminals , 1984, IEEE Trans. Commun..

[2]  Eiichi Yoshida,et al.  An algorithm of dividing a work area to multiple mobile robots , 1995, Proceedings 1995 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Human Robot Interaction and Cooperative Robots.

[3]  Dj Stilwell J. S. Bay, “Optimal Behavior of a System of Mobile Robots Executing a Common Task,” Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp , May . 14. Ünsal, C. and J. , 1994 .

[4]  J. Ota,et al.  Transferring and regrasping a large object by cooperation of multiple mobile robots , 1995, Proceedings 1995 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Human Robot Interaction and Cooperative Robots.

[5]  Jacques Ferber,et al.  From Tom Thumb to the Dockers: some experiments with foraging robots , 1993 .

[6]  Hajime Asama,et al.  An infra-red sensory system with local communication for cooperative multiple mobile robots , 1995, Proceedings 1995 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Human Robot Interaction and Cooperative Robots.

[7]  Kikuo Fujimura,et al.  Map making by cooperating mobile robots , 1993, [1993] Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.