Robot communication via substrate vibrations

摘要

This paper reports on a project to develop a form of inter-robot communication using substrate vibrations. Several species of insects and animals create vibrations in the surface they are standing on in order to transmit information to conspecifics. This form of communication has a number of advantages not shared by some other methods. It ensures that the message is only received by creatures that share the same substrate. If mobility is restricted to moving over the surface of the substrate it ensures that there is a reasonable chance of finding a navigable path from the receiver to the originator of the vibrations. Vibration communication could also be used in situations where wireless or optical communication were not possible due to the screening effect of nearby metal structures or in situations where it was undesirable. In this project a fixed vibration generator has been developed together with a detection system mounted on a mobile robot. Signal processing algorithms were developed to identify two different transmitted messages and provide amplitude information that could be used to guide the mobile robot towards the transmitter. This paper provides details of the vibration transmitter, the receiver, signal processing algorithms and robot control algorithm. Practical results of vibration communication where different mesages are passed between transmitter and receiver together with source location experiments are also given. 1