Wireless vehicle-to-infrastructure data gathering for robot platooning

This paper presents firstly the development of the infrastructure to emulate and verify the behavior of robots in a platooning scenario based on mOway mobile robots. Radio Frequency communications and how they are handled in both ends are the keys in this distributed wireless vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) data gathering implementation. Secondly, the paper investigates a state-space model predictive control strategy for platoon guidance using only longitudinal changes for the automatically controlled robots. The control strategy was implemented and tested in simulation and in real-time, while the data gathered through the distributed wireless V2I system was used to monitor the mobile robots on-line and afterwards to analyze the behavior of the mobile robot platoon. Studying robot platooning and the relationship with the communication issues allows one to understand the dynamics of the platoon and, therefore, to develop a suitable traffic control strategy.