Using Situated Communication in Distributed Autonomous Mobile Robotics

Abstract

When using communication in multi-robot systems it's often not desirable to choose an abstract form of communication that separates the messages from the physical environment in which they have meaning. If the messages are separated from the environment localization information has to be encoded into the messages in order for the receiver to be able to situate the content of the messages. Here we point out that if we instead use a situated form of communication that exploits the physical properties of the signal transferring the message localization information is not needed. We demonstrate this idea by showing how an extremely simple control system that uses short range communication can keep four LEGO Mindstorms robots together in a group. It's also discussed how this idea can be extended to make it possible to simplify path planning in multi-robot systems.