AutoPower: Toward Energy-aware Software Systems for Distributed Mobile Robots

— Autonomous robot systems have to manage their energy wisely in order to complete their missions. Typical approaches seek to conserve energy by energy-efficient motion or sensor planning. This paper puts forth a distributed systems approach to power management. Specifically, it develops and presents AutoPower, which is a model that characterizes robot software systems’ computation and communication energy behaviors. With AutoPower, it is possible to make principled decisions about (1) where to deploy software components across the distributed computing resources of autonomous robotic systems, and (2) how the different systems involved should communicate to best meet overall mission objectives. We showcase AutoPower by using a multi-robot search-and-rescue mission as a guiding application. For this scenario, application of the model shows that there are counterintuitive energy trade-offs in configuring such application software. Further, by using AutoPower to guide deployment an...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Keith J. O'Hara, Ripal Nathuji, Himanshu Raj, Karsten Schwan, Tucker R. Balch
• Keywords: Autonomous Robot Systems, Autonomous Robotic Systems, ICRA 2006, Robot Software Systems, Robotics