Towards the deployment of a mobile robot network with end-to-end performance guarantees

Communication is essential for coordination in most cooperative control and sensing paradigms. In this paper, we present an experimental study of strategies for maintaining end-to-end communication links for tasks such as surveillance and search and rescue where team connectivity is essential for providing situational awareness to a base station. We consider the differences between monitoring point-to-point signal strength versus data throughput and present experimental results with our multi-robot testbed in outdoor environments

[1]  M. Ani Hsieh,et al.  Constructing radio signal strength maps with multiple robots , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[2]  Reid G. Simmons,et al.  Maintaining line of sight communications networks between planetary rovers , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

[3]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Cooperative Control of Robot Formations , 2002 .

[4]  Anthony Cowley,et al.  Distributed sensor databases for multi-robot teams , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[5]  Matthew Powers,et al.  Value-Based Communication Preservation for Mobile Robots , 2004, DARS.

[6]  Mario F. M. Campos,et al.  Decentralized motion planning for multiple robots subject to sensing and communication constraints , 2003 .

[7]  Andrew H. Fagg,et al.  Signal Strength Coordination for Cooperative Mapping , 2005 .

[8]  Roderic A. Grupen,et al.  Active QoS Flow Maintenance in Controlled Mobile Networks , 2005 .

[9]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  Line-of-sight constrained exploration for reactive multiagent robotic teams , 2002, 7th International Workshop on Advanced Motion Control. Proceedings (Cat. No.02TH8623).

[10]  Roderic A. Grupen,et al.  Coordinated teams of reactive mobile platforms , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[11]  Stergios I. Roumeliotis,et al.  Distributed Multi-Robot Localization , 2000, DARS.

[12]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  Multi-robot communication-sensitive reconnaissance , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[13]  Luiz Chaimowicz,et al.  ROCI: a distributed framework for multi-robot perception and control , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

[14]  Yi Guo,et al.  A distributed and optimal motion planning approach for multiple mobile robots , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[15]  Alan F. T. Winfield,et al.  Distributed Sensing and Data Collection via Broken Ad Hoc Wireless Connected Networks of Mobile Robots , 2000, DARS.

[16]  Stergios I. Roumeliotis,et al.  Distributed multirobot localization , 2002, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[17]  Francesco Bullo,et al.  COVERAGE CONTROL FOR MOBILE SENSING NETWORKS: VARIATIONS ON A THEME , 2002 .

[18]  Sonia Martínez,et al.  Coverage control for mobile sensing networks , 2002, IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation.

[19]  Gaurav S. Sukhatme,et al.  An Experimental Study of Localization Using Wireless Ethernet , 2003, FSR.

[20]  Aleksandar Neskovic,et al.  Modern approaches in modeling of mobile radio systems propagation environment , 2000, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[21]  Peter I. Corke,et al.  Networked Robots: Flying Robot Navigation using a Sensor Net , 2003, ISRR.