Title: Coordinated control of mobile antennas for ad hoc networks

Authors: Gianluca Antonelli, Filippo Arrichiello, Stefano Chiaverini, Roberto Setola

Addresses: Dipartimento di Automazione, Elettromagnetismo, Ingegneria dell'Informazione e Matematica Industriale, Universita degli Studi di Cassino, via G. Di Biasio 43, 03043 Cassino, FR, Italy. ' Dipartimento di Automazione, Elettromagnetismo, Ingegneria dell'Informazione e Matematica Industriale, Universita degli Studi di Cassino, via G. Di Biasio 43, 03043 Cassino, FR, Italy. ' Dipartimento di Automazione, Elettromagnetismo, Ingegneria dell'Informazione e Matematica Industriale, Universita degli Studi di Cassino, via G. Di Biasio 43, 03043 Cassino, FR, Italy. ' Laboratorio Sistemi Complessi e Sicurezza, Facolta di Ingegneria, Universita Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, via E. Longoni 83, 00155 Roma, Italy

Abstract: This paper investigates the implementation of a wireless mobile ad hoc network to guarantee that an autonomous agent (an autonomously driven mobile vehicle or a human), remains connected to a fixed base station while performing its own mission. To this purpose, the use of a platoon of mobile robots is proposed to carry a number of repeater antennas; these are suitably moved to dynamically ensure a multi hop communication link to the moving agent, hence extending and adapting the area covered by the sole base station. Self-configuration of the robots| platoon is achieved by a singularity-robust task-priority inverse kinematics algorithm via the definition of suitable task functions. The obtained simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Keywords: mobile ad hoc networks; coverage area adaptation; multi-robot systems; multiple robots; mobile robots; motion planning; path planning; inverse kinematics; mobile networks; wireless networks; coordinated control; mobile antennas; autonomous agents; simulation; communications; robot coordination; cooperating robots; wireless devices; connectivity; obstacle avoidance; fault tolerance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIC.2006.008649

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control, 2006 Vol.1 No.1, pp.63 - 71

Published online: 13 Jan 2006 *

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