When Good Comms Go Bad: Communications Recovery for Multi-Robot Teams

Abstract

Ad-hoc networks among groups of autonomous mobile robots are becoming a common occurrence as teams of robots take on increasingly complicated missions over wider areas. Research has often focused on proactive means in which the individual robots of the team may prevent communication failures between nodes in this network. This is not always possible especially in unknown or hostile environments. This research addresses reactive aspects of communication recovery. How should the members of the team react in the event of unseen communication failures between some or all of the nodes in the network? We present a number of behaviors to be utilized in the event of communications failure as well as a behavioral sequencer to further enhance the effectiveness of these recovery behaviors. The performance of the communication recovery behaviors is analyzed in simulation and their application on hardware platforms is discussed.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2004
Accession Number
ADA443157

Entities

People

  • Patrick Ulam
  • Ronald C. Arkin

Organizations

  • Georgia Tech

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Ad Hoc Networks
  • Aircrafts
  • Area Coverage
  • Attenuation
  • Collision Avoidance
  • Communication Channels
  • Communication Networks
  • Environment
  • Information Operations
  • Intervals
  • Line Of Sight
  • Mesh Networks
  • Military Operations
  • Networks
  • Recovery
  • Robots
  • Simulations

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Computer Networking
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Autonomous Systems
  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - Autonomous System Control