BBN Technologies

Our goal is to dramatically reduce the amount of energy used by ad hoc networking protocols while maintaining the applications and network constraints of small-scale tactical robots. This work will be designed as a relatively independent enabling technology that can be applied across a variety of robotic ad hoc networking solutions to realize energy-efficient communications without substantially reducing connectivity, increasing delay, or increasing computational burden. BBN has designed and developed individual protocols that work at a variety of levels within the traditional ad hoc networking stack. Additionally, we are specifying methods of interacting with robotic control to take advantage of the tight integration between network, mission, and motion control. Together, these functions will compose a unified Energy-Conserving Protocol Stack for Small-Scale Robots that can be incorporated into future robots to produce a substantial energy savings while keeping delay and throughput requirements within applications constraints.