Energy-Effcient Scheduling for Autonomous Mobile Robots

An autonomous robot has to sense its environment and prevent collision. Stereovision is a widely used technology for distance calculation and collision prevention. While a robot is moving, it has to detect an obstacle before a collision. This result in a real-time constraint and it may be adjusted by slowing down the motor. Since mobile robots usually carry limited energy, energy conservation is crucial. Stereovision requires substantial amounts of computation and causes much energy consumption. This paper presents a new approach for energy conservation for a mobile robot. We consider the energy consumed by both the on-board processor and the motor. Our method controls both the processor's frequency and the motor's speed to reduce energy while preventing collision. We formulate the problem as non-linear optimization and demonstrate that more energy can be saved by adjusting both the frequency and the speed simultaneously