Swarm Robotic Time Synchronization for Object Tracking

Wireless sensor and ad-hoc networks have been integrated into many self-organized tasks, including self-organized real-time tasks. Swarm robotics is a new field of research, which offers a set of advantages like motion, redundancy, flexibility, etc. compared to both sensor networks and ad-hoc ones. On the other hand, there are some difficulties in directly using swarm robotics for these kinds of tasks without modifying or even extending some of the strategies and protocols used in wireless sensor and ad-hoc networks. Time synchronization may serve as a prominent example of extensions needed to fit swarm systems. Our article focuses on employing swarm robotics in self-organized object tracking tasks. We develop a new strategy for overcoming the effect of the high degree of motion in swarm robotics via applying time synchronization protocols.