Optimizing self-organizing, large-scale, mobile robotic broadband networks

Byung-Cheol Min, Purdue University

Abstract

Maximizing the distance of robotic communication over a great number of kilometers enables mobile robot applications for environmental monitoring, emergency services, homeland security and military domains. In real-world situations, however, robot communication is subject to many limitations such as limited radio range and limited bandwidth. In this dissertation, we directly focus on such communication problems and present solutions to the challenges of self-orientation of directional antennas, antenna tracking, the robot deployment problem, and robotic convoying systems. Those solutions play an important role in four different applications that we setup: point-to-point communication for static nodes, point-to-point communication for mobile nodes, end-to-end communication for static nodes, and end-to-end communication for mobile nodes, respectively. Each application relates to long-distance robot communication. Since our practical goal is to realize solutions to robot communication problems that can be experimentally verified, we also detail the design and implementation of our mobile robot platforms, wireless networking systems, and antenna aiming systems. Through extensive real-world experiments with these systems, we verify that our approaches are very robust and effective in high quality and long-range robot communication.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Matson, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Electrical engineering|Robotics|Computer science

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