Ad-hoc and Multi-hop Wireless Sensor Networks for Activity Capture in Cooperative Robotics

Abstract

Cooperative robotics has been the focus of attention of various groups in recent years. The idea of using a team of robots instead of a single one to execute a task came from the necessity of accomplishing a task that is too difficult or too complex for a single robot. In some situations, using a group of simple robots can be more efficient, less expensive, and more fault-tolerant than having a single powerful, highly specialized robot for each task. Constant, reliable and stable communication amongst the robots and between the robots and a base station becomes highly necessary and useful. This thesis presents an algorithm for ad-hoc wireless communication among mobile, cooperative robots. Software has been developed to enable the robots to communicate with each other and with a base station. The network is designed to accommodate the failure of any node(s), and the replacement or addition of new nodes as well. In one operating mode, all communication packets are routed to the base station in addition to their intended destination. In this mode, the base station performs real-time event logging. This enables researchers to replay an entire scenario step-by-step to perform any desired analysis of system operation.