Modelling Smart Mobile Robotic Networks from a Cyber Physical System Perspective

Mobile robotic network (MRN) consists of a group of robotic nodes (such as mobile sensors, unmanned vehicles, UAVs and mobile robots) that can communicate with each other for collaboration, in which motion control and communication will both play crucial roles. With recent advances in artificial intelligence, robotic nodes are becoming smart with more powerful computational capability. Therefore, there appears a strong trend to integrally design MRNs from these three aspects: motion control, communication and computation. Cyber physical system that bridges the cyber world of communication and computation with the physical world of motion control provides us a new perspective to MRNs. In this research, we analyze the tight integration and coupling of these cyber physical aspects in MRNs, and provide a framework to specify the effect of each aspect and the transitions among them in terms of their contributions to the network performance. We use illustrative examples of flock motion, topology motion and ad hoc networking in MRNs to demonstrate the framework.