Robomote and Mobile Sensor Networks

Posted 28 Mar 2004 at 21:03 UTC by steve

Since we first reported on Smart Dust back in May of 2001, lots of progress has been made in two directions. The smallest motes are still steadily shrinking towards the size of dust. Meanwhile, the big motes are getting smarter and evolving into COTS Dust and mote-based mobile sensor networks. Robomote is a mote developed by the USC Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems. Robomote is a macro mote designed to act as part of a mobile sensor network made up of hundreds or thousands of identical robots that would monitor the environment. A recently published a working paper (PDF format) from CRES describes the AVR-based Robomote and its potential applications in detail. Many of the design features of the Robomote could be applied to any small, mobile robot.