A Practical Implementation of Random Peer-to-Peer Communication for a Multiple-Robot System

In this paper, we present a physical implementation of random peer-to-peer (RP2P) communication for use in a multiple-robot system and analyze its performance. Traditionally, multiple-robot systems have either broadcast all of their inter-robot communication or have avoided explicit communication altogether. RP2P communication, on the other hand, allows efficient system-level communication while retaining the error-correction capabilities of peer-to-peer connections. We demonstrate that RP2P communication can be implemented with off-the-shelf components. MRS as large as ten robots are investigated and it is demonstrated that message rates as high as 50 messages/second are easily achievable using TCP connections and 802.11B wireless network interfaces.