Reliability of ROS Networked Mobile Robots

When working remotely with mobile robotics, a reliable wireless communication network becomes essential, especially in large operating regions. As most teleoperated robots rely on standard Wi-Fi communication, network behavior has a crucial effect on autonomous robot control. The main goal of this research is to measure and diagnose the system reliability, roaming issues, and bottlenecks of such data transmission. To study these significant factors, two measurement scenarios were conducted. Measurements consist of two Wi-Fi access points (AP) and a TurtleBot II robot used in two different system set-up configurations. In the first configuration, two APs are connected in bridge mode (LAN connection) and in the second configuration the APs are connected in WDS bridge (Wireless Data Distribution) mode. This article presents the results of Robot Operating System (ROS) IEEE 802.11 network measurements in roaming mode, in wireless bridge mode, and in an extended coverage area employed in WDS mode. Results of data transmission measurements, configurations, and evaluation of the entire system are also presented. All the measurements utilize the Open Cloud Robotic Platform (OpenCRP)1 an open-source cloud robotics ecosystem based on service-oriented PaaS architecture using the Ubuntu Linux operating system.