A Multi-robot Topic Communication Method Based on TCP and UDP

Nowadays, many scholars are devoted to studying the cross-platform communication of multi-robots, in addition, the traditional C/S (Client/Server) communication mode in multi-robot networks relies on the centralized management of Master nodes. If the Master node goes down, the robots in the network cannot create new connections in the communication network. To solve the above problems, this paper designs a multi-robot distributed communication method based on TCP and UDP in the Local Area Network (LAN), this method improves the C/S communication mode, cancels the Master node and designs a UDP broadcast topic mechanism, allows robots to subscribe to target topics independently to achieve multi-robot cross-platform communication, which is enhancing the robustness of the network. Finally, this paper uses AGV and ABB robotic arms as the experimental platform, builds a multi-robot topic communication network based on the proposed method, and conducts a collaborative grab experiment. The results show that the built network is stable and reliable, and multi-robot cross-platform collaborative work is realized.

I. Introduction

With the rapid development of robot hardware technologies such as sensors, controllers and actuators, as well as the in-depth application of image recognition, task planning, deep learning, and control theory to the robot field, robot systems need to face increasingly complex operating environment and meet various of task requirements ^[1]-[3]. As a crucial data exchange measure between various functional modules of the robot, communication is a vital part of the development and application in robot system.