Wireless communications for a multiple robot system

A multidisciplinary research project is being undertaken at NPS to develop a semi-autonomous robotic system to detect and clear lab mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO). The robotic system under development consists of a land vehicle, an aerial vehicle, and a ground-based control station. Reliable communication between these three stations is needed. A traditional wire-based network requires that the vehicles be tethered and severely limits the mobility of the vehicles. A wireless local area network (LAN) is proposed to provide communications between the control station and the vehicles. The objective of this work is to specify and develop the physical (hardware) and logical (software) architecture of a wireless LAN that accommodates the needs of the mine/UXO project. Through an analysis of wireless modulation techniques, a market survey of wireless devices, and a field test of wireless devices, a wireless LAN is designed to meet the technological, performance, regulation interference, and mobility requirements of the mine/UXO project. Finally, the wireless communication protocol (specified by a FSM model and implemented in ANSI C code using Windows socket network programming) completes the wireless LAN implementation.