Operating primitives supporting traffic regulation and control of mobile robots under distributed robotic systems

Abstract

Two distributed operating primitives (1 out of N and deadlock detection) are presented to support fully distributed traffic regulation and control for multiple autonomous mobile robots operating in a 2-D discrete network consisting of passage segments, intersections and terminals, all of which are of only finite capacity. In consistency with the model of distributed robotic systems (DRS), no centralized mechanism, synchronized clock, shared memory or ground support is assumed. It is shown that simple, low bandwidth inter-robot communication is only required among a finite, small number of spatially adjacent robotic units. The correctness of these two distributed algorithms are provable.