A Leader-Follower Communication Protocol for Multi-Agent Robotic Systems

Abstract

The implementation of multi-agent robotic systems is becoming a trending technology due to its useful applications that require the coordination between multiple robots without external interference from humans. Such systems require the combination of successful communication, artificial intelligence and self-organization. In this paper, a new leader-follower communication protocol is proposed, implemented upon wireless communication to establish the coordination between multiple robots. The communication protocol specifies the message format between a leader robot and its followers in the system while taking into consideration some practical considerations like obstacle avoidance and communication loss scenarios. The correctness of the proposed communication protocol is tested on two robotic cars using Arduino microcontroller boards and nrf24l01 wireless module.