Testbed for Mobile Robot Platoon Control System Evaluation

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a testbed for mobile robot platoons based on modern microcontroller units. The sensor/actuator interfacing capacity, the general-purpose communication module and the simple programming environment of the applied controller enable the rapid and flexible development of the robot platoon control system. In spite of the low implementation costs, the testbed allows the implementation and testing of advanced control strategies and communication protocols. The paper presents both the software and hardware development of the testbed. Real-time experimental measurements are also presented to show the applicability of the developed system.