CDCSMA-CD communication method for cooperative robot systems

Robot cooperation means 'work-accomplishment action with collaboration of multiple robots by applying shared information, transmitted from a robot to others in a system'. The definition implies that efficiency of a cooperative robot system depends directly upon two main factors, one is communication among the robots and the other is movement of the robots. Robots with appropriate cooperation are expected to work efficiently. The authors propose here an efficient communication method for a cooperative robots system, Code Division Carrier Sensing Multiple Accesses with Collision Detection (CDCSMA-CD). CDCSMA-CD, differing from communication methods in the past, is specifically designed for a cooperative robot system so it can be applied appropriately for both point-to-point and broadcast communication. Within this paper, the principle and hardware structure of the proposed CDCSMA-CD are described. The efficiency of CDCSMA-CD, compared with other communication methods, is then evaluated and discussed.