Enabling QoS for Collaborative Robotics Applications with Wireless TSN

Abstract

This paper addresses the challenges in guaranteeing accurate time synchronization and deterministic data delivery over wireless using collaborative robotics as an example application. The paper describes a methodology to map application layer QoS requirements from the ROS2 (Robotics Operating System 2) and DDS (Data Distribution System) middleware, used to develop robotics applications, to the link layer transport based on Wireless Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) capabilities built on Wi-Fi. The paper provides experimental results from a prototype implementation of a collaborative task between two robots enabled by WTSN time synchronization and traffic shaping over Wi-Fi. The results demonstrate how time synchronized time-aware scheduling over Wi-Fi can be configured to meet the QoS requirements of the robotics application even in the presence of background traffic sharing the same channel.