A Technical Review of MANET Testbed Using Mobile Robot Technology

Abstract

Recently, MANET (Mobile Ad Hoc Network) researchers have shown increased interest in using mobile robot technology for their testbed platforms. Despite the existence of review papers that discuss the usage of mobile robot technology pertaining to a MANET testbed from the perspective of a MANET researcher, said findings are rather lacklustre as it is not the sole purpose of said reviews. Hence, this review aims to comprehensively discuss the technical aspects that were facilitated with mobile robot technology for previous undertaken research. Only selected MANET testbed relevant to this review are compiled, namely Mobile Emulab, MiNT-m, MiNT-2, Proteus, w-ilab.t, ARUM, Sensei-UU, Kansei, CONET-IT, CONE, Roomba MADNet, Explorebots, SCORPION, MOTEL, iRobotSense, IoT-Lab, and NITOS. The discussions in this article are divided into three parts, namely hardware, software as well as mobile robot positioning and localization. The technical content of this review is expected to be a source of reference for other MANET researchers who are interested to use mobile robots for real mobility in their MANET testbeds.