Control of an intelligent robot system over a wireless network

This paper emphasizes the control-communication co-design problem of a mobile robot with varying network load. A Khepera mobile robot driven by two dc motor-powered wheels is used as an example. Each motor is controlled directly by a PI controller whereas other types of controllers are used for the control of linear and angular velocities of the robot. A Zigbee network is implemented between the controller and the plant and between the sensors and the controller. Difficulties due to wireless network such as delays and packet dropout are studied. The controlled system and the communication network are simulated respectively with Matlab/Simulink and TrueTime.