Data Exchange in Swarms of Mobile Vehicles for Positioning, Control and Navigation

J. Schattenberg, H. Harms, T. Lang, S. Batzdorfer, M. Becker, U. Bestmann

Abstract:	Positioning and automation of single machines under good environmental conditions and with high level equipment is state of the art from the point of view of research and development. Actual research focus, especially in agricultural applications, for mobile machines on construction sites or for search and rescue tasks with unmanned air or ground vehicles, is on the automation of more than one single machine up to groups of machines. Therefore several data has to be exchanged to share information for controlling and navigating the machines, as well as to collect information of the overall process for organization and documentation. Due to that, different requirements for the data exchange can be emphasized like for example the update frequency of network exploration, the amount of data and data security etc. with the focus on robustness under rough and changing environmental outdoor conditions. To cope with all this requirements, a system has been developed within a research project using XBee radio modules based on the wireless standard IEEE 802.15.4, which fits most of the technical requirements. To fulfill the demand for a high frequency data exchange rate of about 1 Hz in combination with a high amount of data to be exchanged standardized techniques for network exploration and data handling could not be used. To minimize the latency during network exploration, small carrier boards were developed which are based on a wireless module and an ATMEGA1284 microcontroller synchronized using GNSS time and pulses supported by the GNSS receiver to avoid data collisions and to minimize unused time slots. The network exploration is based on a time slotted algorithm, where every swarm participant has a unique ID which is coupled to a time slot. Based on the information about the network topology which is represented in an adjacency matrix the data exchange is optimized on different ways. Therefore additional information can be taken into account, like the amount of data, signal strength and the network topology. The overall system was tested in real world tests for various constellations.
Published in:	Proceedings of the ION 2013 Pacific PNT Meeting April 23 - 25, 2013 Marriott Waikiki Beach Resort & Spa Honolulu, Hawaii
Pages:	780 - 792
Cite this article:	Schattenberg, J., Harms, H., Lang, T., Batzdorfer, S., Becker, M., Bestmann, U., "Data Exchange in Swarms of Mobile Vehicles for Positioning, Control and Navigation," Proceedings of the ION 2013 Pacific PNT Meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii, April 2013, pp. 780-792.
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