A study on latency-guaranteed multi-hop wireless communication system for control of robots and drones

Robots, including unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, are the hot research topics aiming at application to disaster response, infrastructure inspection, logistics, etc. Wireless LAN in 2.4GHz band is used for control link of many robots because of cost performance and device availability. However, the wireless LAN protocol is not suitable for the remote control of robots, particularly in the multi-hop network for beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) operation, because of unstable and large transmission latency and interference problems. In this research, we have developed a latency-guaranteed multi-hop wireless communication system specialized for remote control and telemetry link of robots and drones, which need the BLOS operation. This paper presents the design and performance of prototype system obtained in field test.