Design of a networked robotic system capable of enhancing wireless communication capabilities

Abstract

In this paper, we present the design of a networked robotic system capable of enhancing wireless communication capabilities. The core of the system is active antenna tracking with directional antennas. The proposed system is decentralized and consists mainly of a mobile robot system and a command center system. Each system is equipped with off-theshelf network devices such as antennas, access points (AP), and network switches. For directional antennas to be beneficial to our system, we propose a weighted centroid algorithm (WCA), which is a method for active antenna tracking and direction of arrival (DOA) estimation. Through extensive field experiments in different environments and with different antenna selections, such as omni-to-omni, omni-to-directional, directional-to-directional antennas, we demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed system. We expect that our system can be applied in a variety of rescue, surveillance, and emergency scenarios where high bandwidth and long distance communications are needed.

Pound: A multi-master ROS node for reducing delay and jitter in wireless multi-robot networks

“…Assuming poor connection quality with standard wireless networks, authors in [19], [20] proposed enhanced visual and haptic feedback mechanisms to help the robot operator perceive directional wireless connectivity and thereby reduce the risk of communication failure. Wireless tethering and spatial diversity techniques are exploited in [21], [22], [23]. In [24], [25], a Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) is proposed for improved communication between robots.…”

On Connectivity of Wireless Sensor Networks with Directional Antennas

“…Using directional antennas instead of omni-directional antennas in wireless ad hoc networks or WSNs can significantly improve the network performance since directional antennas can concentrate the transmitting/receiving capability to desired directions [ 34 ]. For example, it is shown in some recent studies that using directional antennas in WANs can improve the network capacity and reduce the end-to-end delay [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 26 ]. Besides, using directional antennas in WSNs can only improve the security, as shown in [ 35 , 36 ].…”

“…Recent works, such as [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ], show that applying directional antennas in WSNs can greatly improve the network performance. The performance improvement mainly is owed to the effect that directional antennas can concentrate the radio signal in the desired directions so that the interference in other undesired directions is significantly reduced.…”

A directional antenna based leader–follower relay system for end-to-end robot communications

“…In our prior works, we introduced a novel bearing estimation algorithm using WCA and signal strength measurements from a directional antenna in [11]. In [1], [2], we proposed a leader-follower system using the bearing estimation system, and demonstrated the network throughput performance of the system with experiments involving two robots.…”