Efficient Acquisition of Map Information Using Local Data Sharing Over Hierarchical Wireless Network for Service Robots

Abstract

Service robots in a robotic wireless network (RWN) download map information from map servers for safe movement. A RWN needs to support a number of service robots. However, this functionality is constrained by the limited radio resources of a RWN. This paper addresses the issue of improving wireless-resource efficiency for a number of robots to download map information. We propose a data sharing scheme for robots to save consumption of wireless resources in map information acquisition. In the proposed scheme, robots are clustered, and a majority of client robots locally obtain the map information from a few cluster-head robots that acquire the map information directly from the server. To reduce wireless resource consumption, local data sharing among robots employs a lower transmission power than that is used in directly downloading from the server. The proposed scheme carries out efficient cluster formation so as to reduce the number of robots that download the map from the server, and to increase the number of robots that obtain the map information from the local data sharing.