Coordination in Sensor, Actuator, and Robot Networks

Abstract

This chapter surveys the existing representative work in both sensor-actuator and actuator-actuator coordination. In the coordinated actuator movement problem, actuators are moved to desired locations to save energy in long-term communication tasks where the traffic is sufficiently regular and large in volume to warrant nodes expending energy for moving. A recent study on coordination among flying robots is also introduced. If the robot network is disconnected then sensor nodes may be used to connect some robots. Solutions for robot-robot coordination do not depend on the particular environment served by networked robots. One such environment of interest is the wireless sensor and robot networks (WSRNs), as an extension of multi robot system (MRS). In some applications, the dynamic assignment of tasks among robots is required. Each sensor node sends a sensed value to multiple actuators and each actuator receives sensed values from multiple sensor nodes. Controlled Vocabulary Terms actuators; aerospace robotics; multi-robot systems; wireless sensor networks