Development of Wi-Fi communication module for ATmega microcontroller based mobile robot for cooperative autonomous navigation

Effective formation and coverage control of mobile robots require a reliable and powerful wireless communication infrastructure for exchanging information among themselves. Standard Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) based Wi-Fi networking is a popular wireless communication method which allows rapid development of high bandwidth communication interface for multi-robot systems. A large number of educational and experimental mobile robots have been developed with ATmega microcontrollers for their ease of programming. However, there is no off the shelf Wi-Fi communication module available which can directly interface with the standard ATmega microcontrollers. This paper gives a detailed technical account of how a versatile Wi-Fi communication module can be developed for standard ATmega microcontrollers so that it can be utilized for establishing a powerful communication among a group of mobile robots. The circuit development and power supply issues have been elaborated. The effectiveness of the communication module developed has been established by successful experimentation of ATmega microcontroller based autonomous mobile robots for cooperative navigation.