LOCAL COMMUNICATION OF MULTIPLE MOBILE ROBOTS - DESIGN OF OPTIMAL COMMUNICATION AREA FOR COOPERATIVE TASKS

This paper presents an optimal design for local communication between multiple mobile robots. In previous studies of local communication in multirobot systems, the area of communication was not designed using m athematical analysis, but only time-consuming simulations of multirobo t communications. We analyzed the information transmission efficiency and created an optimal communication area that minimizes the informati on transmission time to multiple robots. This optimization comprises t wo steps. First, we derive the ''information transmission probability' ' for various task models. Next, the derived information transmission probability is used to minimize the information transmission time. The optimal communication design is tested for various tasks, using syste m parameters. The analytical results are further verified by using com puter simulations of multirobot communications and experiments with lo cal communication. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.