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Spatially targeted communication in decentralized multirobot systems

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Abstract

Spatially targeted communication (STC) allows a message sender to choose message recipients based on their location in space. Currently, STC in multirobot systems is limited to centralized systems. In this paper, we propose a novel communication protocol that enables STC in decentralized multirobot systems. The proposed protocol dispenses with the many aspects that underpin previous approaches, including external tracking infrastructure, a priori knowledge, global information, dedicated communication devices or unique robot IDs. We show how off-the-shelf hardware components such as cameras and LEDs can be used to establish ad-hoc STC links between robots. We present a Markov chain model for each of the two constituent parts of our proposed protocol and we show, using both model-based analysis and experimentation, that the proposed protocol is highly scalable. We also present the results of extensive experiments carried out on an autonomous, heterogeneous multirobot system composed of one aerial robot and numerous ground-based robots. Finally, two real world application scenarios are presented in which we show how spatial coordination can be achieved in a decentralized multirobot system through STC.

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Notes

  1. Note that this is the allocation of roles used in the experiments presented in this paper; it is not a requirement of our protocol. For example, in previous work we showed the protocol working where both the initiator and potential recipient robots were both ground based (Mathews et al. 2010a).

  2. We have shown in previous work (Mathews et al. 2010a) that our approach can be implemented without the freeze signal if the initiator robot and the potential recipient robots do not leave each others communication ranges.

  3. When the intermediate group size is close to the target group size, the AR.Drone may need to repeatedly request the same set of marXbots to candidate and withdraw candidacies probabilistically until the target group size is reached. Storing the prior state allows robots in state HIB that were previously in state CCR to respond to such a request by avoiding the re-execution of the exclusion mechanism and thus reduces the wall clock time of an iteration.

  4. This estimate need not be precise. One can even round up the estimate by an order of magnitude to be on the safe side. The logarithmic nature of the relationship between the number of robots in the system and the number of iterations in the STC protocol (see Fig. 7) ensures that the cost in terms of additional iterations will be very low.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the European Research Council through the ERC Advanced Grant “E-SWARM: Engineering Swarm Intelligence Systems” (Contract 246939). Nithin Mathews acknowledges support from Wallonia-Brussels-International (WBI) through a Scholarship for Excellence Grant. Anders Lyhne Christensen acknowledges support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the Grants PEst-OE/EEI/LA0008/2013 and EXPL/EEI-AUT/0329/2013. Rehan O’Grady, Arne Brutschy, and Marco Dorigo acknowledge support from the Fund for Scientific Research F.R.S.–FNRS of Belgium’s French Community, of which they are a postdoctoral researcher, a research fellow, and a research director respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRIDIA-CoDE, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50, CP 194/6, 1050, Brussels, Belgium

    Nithin Mathews, Gabriele Valentini, Rehan O’Grady, Arne Brutschy & Marco Dorigo

  2. Instituto de Telecomunicações, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Avenida Forças Armadas, 1649-026, Lisboa, Portugal

    Anders Lyhne Christensen

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  1. Nithin Mathews
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  2. Gabriele Valentini
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Correspondence to Nithin Mathews.

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Mathews, N., Valentini, G., Christensen, A.L. et al. Spatially targeted communication in decentralized multirobot systems. Auton Robot 38, 439–457 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-015-9423-6

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