QUICK TWO-WAY TIME MESSAGE EXCHANGE FOR TIME SYNCHRONIZATION IN ROBOT NETWORKS

Abstract

Time synchronization is important for coordination and control in multiple robot networks. Two-way time message exchange (TTME) time synchronization is efficient, but due to variable response latency, it does not completely meet the requirements for quadrotor robot groups. Aiming to provide accurate time synchronization for robots, the proposed quick TTME synchronization starts a downlink after an uplink quickly and tries to maintain a fixed clock offset for the estimation. A timeout constraint is used to filter invalid observations and optimize clock offset estimation. This avoids the increasing clock offset caused by large software latencies and communication link delays, guarantees a fixed clock offset for TTME, and provides precise and stable clock offset estimation for time synchronization in robot networks.