Efficient Unicast Messaging for Mobile Robots

Mobile multi-robot teams are useful in many critical applications such as search and rescue. Explicit communication among robots in such mobile multi-robot teams is useful for the coordination of such teams as well as exchanging data. Since many applications for mobile robots involve scenarios in which communication infrastructure may be damaged or unavailable, mobile robot teams frequently need to communicate with each other by using ad hoc networking. In such scenarios, energy efficient routing protocols to deliver messages among robots are a key requirement. In this paper, we propose and evaluate two routing protocols tailored for use in ad hoc networks formed by mobile multi-robot teams: Mobile Robot Distance Vector (MRDV) and Mobile Robot Source Routing (MRSR). Both protocols exploit the unique mobility characteristics of mobile robot networks to perform efficient routing. Our simulation study show that both MRDV and MRSR incur lower overhead while operating in mobile robot networks when compared to traditional mobile ad hoc network routing protocols such as DSR and AODV.