UC Berkeley

Small highly mobile robots, and in particular micro air vehicles (MAVs), are well suited to the task of exploring unknown indoor environments such as buildings and caves. Such a task imposes a number of requirements on the underlying communication infrastructure, with differing goals during various stages of the mission. This work addresses those requirements with a hybrid communications infrastructure consisting of a stationary mesh network along with the mobile nodes. The combined network operates in two independent modes, coupling a highly efficient, low duty cycle, low throughput mode for routing and persistent sensing with a burst mode for high data rate communication. By strategically distributing available frequency channels between the mobile agents and the stationary nodes, the overall network provides reliable long-term communication paths while maximizing data throughput when needed.