RoboCast: Asynchronous Communication in Robot Networks

Zohir Bouzid (1) , Shlomi Dolev (2) , Maria Potop-Butucaru (3) , Sébastien Tixeuil (1)

1 NPA - Networks and Performance Analysis
2 Department of Computer Science [Beer-Sheva]
3 Regal - Large-Scale Distributed Systems and Applications

This paper introduces the \emph{RoboCast} communication abstraction. The RoboCast allows a swarm of non oblivious, anonymous robots that are only endowed with visibility sensors and do not share a common coordinate system, to asynchronously exchange information. We propose a generic framework that covers a large class of asynchronous communication algorithms and show how our framework can be used to implement fundamental building blocks in robot networks such as gathering or stigmergy. In more details, we propose a RoboCast algorithm that allows robots to broadcast their local coordinate systems to each others. Our algorithm is further refined with a local collision avoidance scheme. Then, using the RoboCast primitive, we propose algorithms for deterministic asynchronous gathering and binary information exchange.

Mots clés: robot networks; stigmergy; asynchronous robots; corda; collision avoidance

Domaines: Calcul parallèle, distribué et partagé [cs.DC]

Zohir Bouzid, Shlomi Dolev, Maria Potop-Butucaru, Sébastien Tixeuil. RoboCast: Asynchronous Communication in Robot Networks. [Research Report] ???. 2010. ⟨inria-00496379v2⟩