Multi-robot Control Architecture for Hospital Delivery Service in Unstable Network Environment

Seohyun Jeon, Jaeyeon Lee

2017

Abstract

This paper describes the problem about controlling multiple robots in a real world when the network connection is unstable. Robots are deployed at the hospital for delivery service. Robots navigate autonomously through the hospital-wide hallway while delivering items from point to point. The delivery task is assigned and sent to the robot by the server via wireless network. To increase the performance of using fleet of robots, online task assignment and fleet optimization is required. However, the robots are frequently disconnected with the network since the robot continuously moves and the mission area covers multiple floors. The online communication cannot be guaranteed at all times. Therefore, this paper proposes a control architecture to cope with such unstable network connectivity. The server has a specific message board to communicate with the robot. Task assignment of the server or status report of the robot are transferred through this message board. In general, the server uses a fixed IP address, whereas a robot uses a dynamic IP address. Therefore, the connection is always initiated from the robot’s side by the heartbeat message. With this architecture, the communication between the server and the robot can be achieved in a partially online network environment. And, the delivery performance of the fleet of robots can be increased by the scheduler assigning the task online.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Jeon S. and Lee J. (2017). Multi-robot Control Architecture for Hospital Delivery Service in Unstable Network Environment . In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO, ISBN 978-989-758-264-6, pages 270-277. DOI: 10.5220/0006410502700277

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icinco17,
author={Seohyun Jeon and Jaeyeon Lee},
title={Multi-robot Control Architecture for Hospital Delivery Service in Unstable Network Environment},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO,},
year={2017},
pages={270-277},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006410502700277},
isbn={978-989-758-264-6},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO,
TI - Multi-robot Control Architecture for Hospital Delivery Service in Unstable Network Environment
SN - 978-989-758-264-6
AU - Jeon S.
AU - Lee J.
PY - 2017
SP - 270
EP - 277
DO - 10.5220/0006410502700277