Departmental Colloquium

A Real-Time Distributed Software Infrastructure with an Adaptive TDMA Wireless Communication Protocol for Teams of Mobile Autonomous Robots

Frederico Santos

DEE-ISEC, Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra; IEETA-DETI, University of Aveiro

Tuesday September 1, 2009
12:00 pm - SENSQ 5317

Hosted by Daniel Mosse

Abstract

Interest in mobile autonomous robots has been growing recently due to their capacity to cooperate for diverse purposes such as rescue, demining, and security. However, such cooperation requires the exchange of state data that is time sensitive and achieving timeliness with RF communication is intrinsically difficult due to the openness of the medium. This presentation describes a communication layer that improves the timeliness of periodic data exchanges among a team, ultimately reducing the chances of lost packets caused by collisions between team members. The presented work has been running for more than 5 years on the CAMBADA (Cooperative Autonomous Mobile RoBots with Advanced Distributed Architecture) RoboCup Middle Size League Team from University of Aveiro.

Biography of Speaker

Frederico Santos is a PhD student at the University of Aveiro and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Institute of Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra since 2001. He received a B.S. and an M.S. in 1999 and 2003, respectively, from the University of Aveiro. His research interests include real-time communication, wireless communication, and multi-robot systems. Frederico has also been working on the CAMBADA RoboCup MSL team, the Portuguese champion for the last 3 years and world champion in 2008.