Publication
Reliable, Cloud-based Communication for Multi-Robot Systems
Ronny Hartanto; Markus Eich
In: The 6th Annual IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Practical Robot Applications. IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Practical Robot Applications (TePRA-2014), April 14-15, Woburn, Massachusetts, USA, IEEE, 4/2014.
Abstract
In contrast to single robotic agent, multi-robot systems are highly dependent on reliable communication. Robots have to synchronize tasks or to share poses and sensor readings with other agents, especially for co-operative mapping task where local sensor readings are incorporated into a global map. The drawback of existing communication frameworks is that most are based on a central component which has to be constantly within reach. Additionally, they do not prevent data loss between robots if a failure occurs in the communication link. During a distributed mapping task, loss of data is critical because it will corrupt the global map. In this work, we propose a cloud-based publish/subscribe mechanism which enables reliable communication between agents during a cooperative mission using the Data Distribution Service (DDS) as a transport layer. The usability of our approach is verified by several experiments taking into account complete temporary communication loss.