Nomadic routing applications for wireless networking in a team of miniature robots

Abstract

Distributed robotics uses multiple robots through coordination of task to solve problems. Developing a distributed robotic system introduces a number of challenges, one of which is the intra-robot communication and networking of data and commands. Due to the characteristics of the targeted robotic missions and environments, the wireless networking requirements impose stringent constraints in terms of available memory, processing, and power consumption. Designing under these constraints and still providing support for such functions as synchronous commands and proxy processing is the true challenge. This paper discusses research in providing a lightweight wireless routing/networking solution that can dynamically tune the intra-robotic networking to adapt to the robotic team's mission needs and the environment situation encountered.