Co-Optimization of Communication and Motion Planning of a Robotic Operation under Resource Constraints and in Fading Environments

We consider the scenario where a robot is tasked with sending a fixed number of given bits of information to a remote station, in a limited operation time, as it travels along a pre-defined trajectory, and while minimizing its motion and communication energy costs. We propose a co-optimization framework that allows the robot to plan its motion speed, transmission rate and stop time, based on its probabilistic prediction of the channel quality along the trajectory. We show that in order to save energy, the robot should move faster (slower) and send less (more) bits at the locations that have worse (better) predicted channel qualities. We furthermore prove that if the robot must stop, it should then stop only once and at the location with the best predicted channel quality. We also prove some properties for two special scenarios: the heavy-task load and the light-task load cases. We also propose an additional stop-time online adaptation strategy to further fine tune the stop location as the robot moves along its trajectory and measures the true value of the channel. Finally, our simulation results show that our proposed framework results in a considerable performance improvement.