Spatially targeted communication in decentralized multirobot systems

Spatially targeted communication (STC) allows amessage sender to choosemessage recipients based on their location in space. Currently, STC in multirobot systems is limited to centralized systems. In this paper, we propose a novel communication protocol that enables STC in decentralizedmultirobot systems.Theproposedprotocol dispenses with the many aspects that underpin previous approaches, including external tracking infrastructure, a priori knowledge, global information, dedicated communication devices or unique robot IDs. We show how off-the-shelf hardware components such as cameras and LEDs can be used to establish ad-hoc STC links between robots. We present a Markov chain model for each of the two constituent parts of our proposed protocol and we show, using both model-based analysis and experimentation, that the proposed protocol is highly scalable.We also present the results of extensive experiments carried out on an autonomous, heterogeneousmultirobot system composed of one aerial robot and numerous groundN. Mathews (B) · G. Valentini · R. O’Grady · A. Brutschy · M. Dorigo IRIDIA-CoDE, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50, CP 194/6, 1050 Brussels, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] G. Valentini e-mail: [email protected] R. O’Grady e-mail: [email protected] A. Brutschy e-mail: [email protected] M. Dorigo e-mail: [email protected] A. L. Christensen Instituto de Telecomunicações, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Avenida Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] based robots. Finally, two real world application scenarios are presented in which we show how spatial coordination can be achieved in a decentralizedmultirobot system through STC.