Wireless Communications for Distributed Navigation in Robot Swarms

We consider a swarm of robots equipped with an infrared range and bearing device that is able both to make estimates of the relative distance and angle between two robots in line-of-sight and to transfer data between them. Through the infrared range and bearing device, the robots create a line-of-sight mobile ad hoc network. We investigate different ways to implement a swarm-level distributed navigation function exploiting the routing information gathered within this network. In the scenario we consider, a number of different events present themselves in different locations. To be serviced, each event requires that a robot with the appropriate skills comes to its location. We present two swarm-level solutions for guiding the navigation of the selected robots towards the events. We use a bio-inspired ad hoc network routing protocol to dynamically find and maintain paths between a robot and an event location in the mobile line-of-sight network, and use them to guide the robot to its g...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: EVOW
• Authors: Gianni A. Di Caro, Frederick Ducatelle, Luca Maria Gambardella
• Keywords: Ad Hoc Network, Artificial Intelligence, Bearing Device, EVOW 2009, Robot