Primate-Inspired Communication Methods for Mobile and Static Sensors and RFID Tags

  • Authors:

  • Yang Xiao;Yanping Zhang;Xiannuan Liang

  • Affiliations:

  • The University of Alabama;The University of Alabama;The University of Alabama

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS)
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Although previous bio-inspired models have concentrated on invertebrates, such as ants, mammals, such as primates with higher cognitive function, are valuable for modeling the increasingly complex problems in engineering. Understanding primates’ social and communication systems and applying what is learned from them to engineering domains will likely lead to solutions to a number of problems. Scent-marking is an important behavior among primates and many other mammals. In this article, inspired by primates’ scent-marking activity, we propose and study a collaboration strategy for mobile and static sensors with RFID tags, where mobile sensors can be treated as robots or mobile actuators and can leave information to direct others to find them. Mobile sensors are equipped with RFID tags (or sensors) that can be deployed whenever needed, and RFID tags (or sensors) carry related information for other robots to pick up. We propose several primate-inspired communication mechanisms, including delayed-and-relayed and scent-trail communication among robots. We analytically model and simulate scent-trail communication. We also study a tracking and pursuing scheme of mobile sensors using simulations in terms of robot speeds, searching function, deployment density, turning function, and so on. We assume that robots (mobile sensors or mobile actuators) are capable of deploying/throwing-out sensors/RFID tags.