Efficient acquisition of map information for service robots using local data sharing over multi-layered wireless network

Abstract

This letter aims to address the problem of wireless resource constraints in wireless robotic networks to enable stable acquisition of map information for a number of robots. In order to reduce wireless resource consumption, we propose a two-step data acquisition scheme for robots. In the proposed scheme, only a few robots directly download map information from the server, most robots acquire map information by means of local data sharing with short range communications among nearby robots. A distributed clustering scheme is utilized to decide which nodes download map information from the server. Evaluation results show that the proposed scheme highly reduces wireless resource consumption, especially when there are many service robots.