CONSTRUCTION OF INFRARED WIRELESS INTER-ROBOT COMMUNICATION NETWORKS FOR DISTRIBUTED SENSING AND COOPERATION OF MULTIPLE AUTONOMOUS MOBILE ROBOTS

This paper presents a space-division optical wireless inter-robot communication system for multiple mobile robots. Infrared optical wireless communication is suitable for the mobile robots, because of its low level of interference in multiple directions. However, optical wireless communication is lost when either of the robots runs and/or rotates due to the nature of infrared rays. The proposed communication system has a set of infrared transceivers, which face all directions. The system can maintain circuit connections by exchanging transceivers. Furthermore it can communicate at the same time with more than one robot in different positions by using different transceivers. Spontaneous construction of inter-robot communication networks based on the selection of arbiters is described. As an example of local sensing capabilities of the system, mutual localization using transceivers on three communicating robots is also described. Hardware realization and performance measurements are illustrated to reveal the effectiveness of the proposed system.