Development of a distributed multiple mobile robot control system for automatic highway maintenance and construction

The distributed control system employs a Windows network, which consists of a host computer and several robot controllers. The robots are tethered mobile robots designed for automating highway maintenance and construction. The host computer, with live video overlay and animation, provides the operator with an integrated and interactive monitoring and control interface. The robot controllers are embedded on mobile robots and are designed to be independent to the host computer. By applying the newest PC and embedding technologies, the system has high flexibility and fault-tolerance for a variety of highway maintenance operations. Both the hardware design and software development are described.