Reliable robotic communication using multi-path TCP

Abstract

Robotics is penetrating into all aspects of human life from being a helper at daily chores to a technician performing precision operations at warehouse. Deploying mobile robots and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to conduct search and rescue operations during industrial accidents and natural disasters is one of the recent applications of robotics. These robots/UAVs are controlled remotely over wireless connections. Any disruption in connectivity of robots/UAVs may be disastrous. It is possible to reduce the chances of outage and improve reliability of communication by using multiple available communication interfaces on a device. In this demo paper, we demonstrate the use of Multipath TCP (MPTCP) in robotics communication. MPTCP uses all available communication interfaces concurrently for communication. Its use in robotics improves the connection reliability as well as the throughput. We have ported MPTCP on resource constrained devices and conducted experiments to evaluate throughput performance and error resilience of different variants of MPTCP by comparing it with that of TCP.