Collision Prevention Platform for a Dynamic Group of Asynchronous Cooperative Mobile Robots

This paper presents a fail-safe platform on which cooperative mobile robots rely for their motion. The platform consists of a collision prevention protocol for a dynamic group of cooperative mobile robots with asynchronous communications. The collision prevention protocol is timefree, in the sense that it never relies on physical time, which makes it extremely robust for timing uncertainty common in wireless networks. It guarantees that no two robots ever collide, regardless of the respective activities of the robots. The protocol is based on a fully distributed path reservation system. It assumes a mobile ad hoc network formed by the robots themselves, and takes advantage of the inherent locality of the problem in order to reduce communication. The protocol requires neither initial nor complete knowledge of the composition of the group. A performance analysis of the protocol provides insights for a proper dimensioning of system parameters in order to maximize the average effective speed of the robots.