Performance analysis of local communication by cooperating mobile robots

This paper presents a novel technique for analyzing and designing local com munication systems for distributed mobile robotic systems (DMRS). Our goal is to provide an analysis-base guideline for designing local communication systems to efficiently transmit task information to the appropriate robots. In this paper, we propose a layered methodology, i.e., design from spatial and temporal aspects based on analysis of information diffusion by local c ommunication between robots. The task environment is classified so that eac h analysis and design is applied in a systematic way. The spatial design gi ves the optimal communication area for minimizing transmission time for var ious cooperative tasks. In the temporal design, we derive the information a nnouncing time to avoid excessive information diffusion. The designed local communication is evaluated in comparison with global communication. Finall y, we performed simulations and experiments to demonstrate that the analysi s and design technique is effective for constructing an efficient local com munication system.