Towards low-datarate communications for cooperative mobile robots

Communication networks for cooperative mobile robot applications have to cope with some peculiar requirements that make them quite different from typical MANETs or WSNs. Recent cooperative robot applications envisage the support of low datarate communication technologies, as this choice is beneficial in terms of energy consumption, weight reduction and integration with WSNs. In this context, this paper discusses the design choices behind a novel protocol for cooperating mobile robot applications that operates on low datarate networks and is able to provide bounded latencies, mobility and reliability.