Researchers at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory have developed an algorithm that will help the Department of Defense more effectively control wirelessly networked robots and other military assets using radio communications. The team demonstrated the success of mapping a region of good connectivity to a radio base station using received signal strength (RSS).
According to Jeffrey Twigg, a contract employee with Army Research Laboratory Computational and Information Sciences Directorate, the team was able to “find and explore areas that have high RSS and then map these areas as having the strongest connectivity to the radio base station… [bringing] us a step closer to operating autonomous systems in complex and unstructured situations like [the battlefield].”
Twigg adds that communication between autonomous robots in an open environment is “well understood.” However, physical structures and other sources of interference dictate a need for the development of more complex radio transmissions. The research team plans to continue research to increase the effectiveness of a networked team of robots in an unknown or complex environment.
