Network-based subsumption architecture for broadcast control of multiple mobile robots based on a poor hardware/software platform

In this paper, a wireless network-based subsumption architecture is proposed for a broadcast control of multiple mobile robots and for reduction of the total design cost required for constructing the system. When designing an actual experimental system using multiple mobile robots, there exits a serious requirement to suppress the total design cost with the increase of the number of robots. Even though each robot has an only poor hardware platform with a limitation of software development, the proposed wireless network-based subsumption architecture enables them to be broadcastly controlled and to be hierarchically implemented a high-level software architecture such as a schooling behavior. Also, this system enables the multiple mobile robots to be omitted the complicated download process of hex code program in debugging work because the debugging is conducted only on a supervisory server, so that the high maintainability can be performed. The multi-robots monitor running on the supervisory server and the agent dispatcher determining to which agent the highest priority of execution should be given, are further described.