Algorithms for improved network lifetime of Cooperative Autonomous Mobile Robotic Systems

We present energy-efficient algorithms for Cooperative Autonomous Mobile Robotic Systems (CAMoRoS) to increase the network lifetime. We present Weighted Traffic Adaptive Medium Access (W-TRAMA) protocol, a collision-free, TDMA-based MAC protocol, which is a weighted variation of TRAMA. W-TRAMA gives a significant improvement in the network lifetime and throughput over existing protocols when the robots operate under a heterogeneous energy profile. W-TRAMA guarantees energy conservation by collision avoidance and by allowing nodes to switch to low-power sleep mode when they are neither transmitting nor receiving. We also present node relocation and path-planning algorithms to reposition robots that are imminent of being disconnected from the network to further extend the network lifetime.