A bio-inspired TDMA scheduling algorithm for underwater robotic swarms

Abstract

In this paper, the frog-call-inspired anti-phase synchronization algorithm is investigated and applied to allocate communication time slots among robotic swarms. The main goal of the work is to solve interference and jamming problems which becomes vital in swarm robot communication and sensing, especially in underwater application. A novel distributed model of this biologically-inspired approach is investigated to improve scalability and enable decentralization of the algorithm. It is proven from the simulated experiment that the model can be applied for scheduling underwater swarm communication within a limited local communication range, however with an acceptable amount (less than 5%) of packet loss. In the end, a real robot experiment using underwater swarm robot platforms is also presented.