Effects of limited bandwidth communications channels on the control of multiple robots

We describe a distributed software system for controlling a group of miniature robots using a very low capacity communication system. Space and power limitations on the miniature robots drastically restrict the capacity of the communication system and require sharing bandwidth and other resources among the robots. We have developed a process management/scheduling system that dynamically assigns resources to each robot in an attempt to maximize the utilization of the available resources while still maintaining a priori behavior priorities. We describe a surveillance task in which the robots patrol an area and watch for motion, and present experimental results.