Simple mobile robots and self-adaptive wireless networks

Disaster areas require mobile robots with extreme capabilities. This paper presents an approach for setting up a network infrastructure to operate such mobile robots. We present a waterproof netserver box as a main component and mobile router robots (RC cars) to extend the network capabilities. The simple mobile robot consists of cheap standard RC components. It provides a view into the disaster area with its sensors, e.g., cameras, and in addition and very important, it sets up a persistent communication between all mobile robots and rescuers. All components use ROS as a middleware and can be integrated in the overall system. In addition to infrastructure networks, mesh networks are also supported to replacce the destroyed network infrastructure. Furthermore, the network and robots are prepared for cloud computing.