TY - GEN
T1 - Adaptive communication in multi-robot systems using directionality of signal strength
AU - Gil, Stephanie
AU - Kumar, Swarun
AU - Katabi, Dina
AU - Rus, Daniela
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Dan Feldman and Brian Julian for experimental and theoretical contributions to this work. The authors acknowledge MIT Lincoln Laboratory and MAST project under ARL Grant W911NF-08-2-0004 for their support.
Publisher Copyright:
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - We consider the problem of satisfying communication demands in a multiagent system where several robots cooperate on a task and a fixed subset of the agents act as mobile routers. Our goal is to position the team of robotic routers to provide communication coverage to the remaining client robots. We allow for dynamic environments and variable client demands, thus necessitating an adaptive solution. We present an innovative method that calculates a mapping between a robot’s current position and the signal strength that it receives along each spatial direction, for its wireless links to every other robot. We show that this information can be used to design a simple positional controller that retains a quadratic structure, while capturing the behavior of wireless signals in real-world environments. Notably, our approach does not necessitate stochastic sampling along directions that are counterproductive to the overall coordination goal, nor does it require exact client positions, or a known map of the environment.
AB - We consider the problem of satisfying communication demands in a multiagent system where several robots cooperate on a task and a fixed subset of the agents act as mobile routers. Our goal is to position the team of robotic routers to provide communication coverage to the remaining client robots. We allow for dynamic environments and variable client demands, thus necessitating an adaptive solution. We present an innovative method that calculates a mapping between a robot’s current position and the signal strength that it receives along each spatial direction, for its wireless links to every other robot. We show that this information can be used to design a simple positional controller that retains a quadratic structure, while capturing the behavior of wireless signals in real-world environments. Notably, our approach does not necessitate stochastic sampling along directions that are counterproductive to the overall coordination goal, nor does it require exact client positions, or a known map of the environment.
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U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-28872-7_4
DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-28872-7_4
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84964909648
SN - 9783319288703
T3 - Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics
SP - 57
EP - 77
BT - Robotics Research - 16th International Symposium ISRR
A2 - Corke, Peter
A2 - Inaba, Masayuki
PB - Springer Verlag
T2 - 16th International Symposium of Robotics Research, ISRR 2013
Y2 - 16 December 2013 through 19 December 2013
ER -