Development of an Adaptable Communication Layer with QoS Capabilities for a Multi-Robot System

Abstract

In this paper we present an approach to connect a multi-robot system of unmanned ground and aerial vehicles inside a mobile ad-hoc network to exchange sensor data requiring a high bandwidth. The introduced communication layer extends the messaging system of an underlying middleware (ROS) to work with non-ideal wireless links. Every connection can be configured with a user defined data rate, protocol and priority to control the overall traffic load in the network. If required, messages can be bufferd during communication outages or due to low available bandwidth. Moreover, the message transport system contains mechanisms for lossless and lossy data compression as well as an user interface to quickly react to different application conditions.