Modularity and Mobility of Distributed Control Software for Networked Mobile Robots

The mobile agent computing paradigm has been explored by the research community over recent years; however, little research has been conducted in its use in the development of robot architectures. We have been examining the use of mobile agents as a distributed control paradigm for structuring multiple robot architectures. Although many advantages of mobile agents are claimed in literature, our investigation has systemically examined whether mobile agents are applicable and beneficial in the multiple robot domain. This paper describes our experience with a number of implementations, namely autonomous, telecontrol and AI robot architectures with which we have explored the properties of mobile agent mobility.