Shared memories: a trail-based coordination server for robot teams

Abstract—Robust, dependable and concise coordination between members of a robot team is a critical ingredient of any such collective activity. Depending on the availability and the characteristics of the particular communication infrastructure, coordination mechanisms can take varied forms, leading to distinct system behaviors. In this paper, we consider the case of robot teams operating within relatively sparse wireless sensor network deployments. We introduce Shared Memories, a trailbased coordination engine, that analyzes interaction patterns between participating team members and sensor network nodes capable to discover significant aggregate patterns, which are made available to the team. To this end, we propose a model for the representation of captured interactions and their sensory context developed as a probabilistic grammar, as well as associated metrics used to rank trails and quantify their significance. Such trails are used as the basis for coordinated operation in team...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ROBOCOMM
• Authors: George Roussos, Dikaios Papadogkonas, J. Taylor, D. Airantzis, Mark Levene, Michael Zoumboulakis
• Keywords: Communications, ROBOCOMM 2007, Robot Teams, Sensor Network, Team Members