Effect of grouping in local communication system of multiple mobile robots

Abstract

For the cooperation in a large system with many mobile robots, local communication system is considered appropriate in terms of the cost and capacity of communication. The behavior of robots has a respectable effect on the efficiency of communication in such a local communication system and it is essential to know what kind of behavior robots should take to realize efficient information transmission for cooperative tasks. We introduce a simple group behavior for the purpose of improving the communication efficiency. This paper analyses the effect of group behavior on the communication performance, and derives differential equations describing information diffusion among robot groups. The optimal group size to transmit information to desired number of robots is obtained from these equations. The effectiveness of the analysis is verified by computer simulation. We also show a self-organization algorithm for group forming designed for local communication system.