Expanding the control scope of cooperative multiple robots

Abstract

When we attempt to construct a multi-robot system in out-door setting, it is natural to provide Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) to form cooperative work. When a robot accidentally moves out from the communication range, it becomes impossible to communicate with one another. In order to mitigate this situation, we employ visible ray to widen the control scope so that the stray robot can move into the radio communication range. In this paper, we propose a method for controlling multi-robot system. That is a combination of visible light and radio communication. Robots are controlled by mobile software agents that convey task information to each robot through MANET. The controlling software agent intermittently visits each robot to check the status of the robot. When the agent finds a missing robot, it uses a beacon light to signal the aerial robot to hover above the current ground robot, and send beacon to the missing robot to come back into the range. The contribution of this research is to expand the scope of communication range of robots. It should provide effective use for the robot system with limited resource in the field.