Robomote: enabling mobility in sensor networks

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Abstract
Severe energy limitations, and a paucity of computation pose a set of difficult design challenges for sensor networks. Recent progress in two seemingly disparate research areas namely, distributed robotics and low power embedded systems has led to the creation of mobile (or robotic) sensor networks. Autonomous node mobility brings with it its own challenges, but also alleviates some of the traditional problems associated with static sensor networks. We illustrate this by presenting the design of the robomote, a robot platform that functions as a single mobile node in a mobile sensor network. We briefly describe two case studies where the robomote has been used for table top experiments with a mobile sensor network. I. INTRODUCTION Sensor networks hold the promise of revolutionizing our daily life by ubiquitously monitoring our environment and/or adjusting it to suit our needs. The benefits of this technology have been elaborated at length in the literature((1), (2), (3), (4)). The realization of such networks poses many challenges which are the subject of active research in the field. These include challenges stemming directly from the paucity of computation, storage and energy, systems challenges such as unattended long term function, routing and distributed com- putation (e.g., for localization, calibration, time synchronization), and finally, challenges associated with the dynamics and spatio-temporal irregularity of the environments within which these networks are expected to function. As an illustration of the utility of autonomous node mobility within sensor networks we present the hardware and software design of the robomote, a robot platform that functions as a single mobile node in a mobile sensor network. We describe two case studies where the robomote has been used for table top experiments with a mobile sensor network. For design and usage details beyond those described in this paper, the reader is directed to the robomote website http: //robotics.usc.edu/∼robomote.

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