Communication Aspects of Coordination in Robot Wireless Networks

摘要

Robots coordinate among themselves to select one of them to respond to an event reported to one of the robots so that the communication cost of selecting the best robot, response time, and cost of performing the task are minimized. Existing solutions are either centralized, assuming a complete graph, or based on flooding with individual responses to a robot decision maker [simple auction protocol (SAP)], ignoring communication cost and response time bound. This article proposes auction aggregation protocols (AAPs) for task assignment in multihop wireless robot networks. A robot collector leads an auction and initiates a response tree construction by transmitting the search message. After receiving the message, each robot makes a decision on whether to retransmit a search message, based on the estimated response cost of its robots, up to k-hops away. Robots wait to receive the bids from its children in the search tree. Then, robots aggregate responses by selecting the best bidandforwarditbacktowardtherobotcollector (auctioning robot). When distance is used as the sole cost metrics, the traversal aggregation algorithm [routing with face traversal (RFT)—routing toward the event with the traversal of the face containing the event] can be applied and is an optimal solution. Several other protocols and their enhancements are also described here. Multirobot systems (MRSs) are well studied in literature [1], and the focal point of the majority of MRS-related articles is on coordination and cooperation. The term networked robotics emerged recently emphasizing that robots can be connected by a wireless medium forming a communication network. There are