MC3 2013 - 2nd International Workshop on Mobility and Communication for Cooperation and Coordination (MC3)

The constant progress of both wireless technologies and robotics is rapidly leading to the convergence of these two fields towards the definition of a new discipline, wireless networked robotics (WNR), tackling multi-robot systems that can exploit the presence of a network medium for information sharing, interaction, and cooperation.
In the past, communication and control have often been seen as two independent components of a robotic system, with the robot being passive with respect to networking and active in relation to other sensory-motor choices. Similarly, in networking, control actions other than communications are seen as external to the network device, and modelled as passive aspects of the system. Only limited work has addressed the inclusion of control mechanisms inside the classical ISO/OSI stack or through cross-layering approaches (mainly for energy consumption and mobility control).
However, in WNR, adopting this differentiation between control and communication does not allow to fully exploit the capabilities of the system, since it directly impacts on the quality and reliability of robots’ information flows.
Networking and control need to be put in closed loop with each other in order to fully unleash the power of a multi-robot system in terms of coordination and cooperative behaviours. In particular, controlled mobility can be play an important role supporting networking, and, in turn, boosting information sharing and robot to robot interactions. Similarly, networking parameters and policies need to continually adapt to the needs and constraints of the tasks the robots are engaged in.
The MC3 workshop aims to address these issues, focusing on the investigation of the mutual interplay and adaptation between control and communication in networked systems featuring the presence of (heterogeneous) multiple mobile robots and sensors. The workshop will provide a contribution laying the pathway towards the information-centric design of cooperative, autonomous and self-organized robotic networks.
The workshop aims to bring together state-of-the-art contributions on the design and implementation of architectures, algorithms, and protocols for current and future applications of Wireless Networked Robotics, with an emphasis on the use of mobility. Original, unpublished contributions are solicited in all aspects of this discipline. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Communication and motion-aware protocols for coordination and the cooperation of heterogeneous devices
Novel communication approaches for multi-robot wireless communications in different scenarios: aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial
Novel network stack or cross-layer architectures that include robot motion and control as network primitives
Intelligent use of controlled mobility to support and to be supported by networking
Cognitive radio and its applications to wireless networked robotics
Cooperative networking for cooperative task execution in multi-robot systems
Machine learning and bio-inspired approaches for wireless networked robotics
Use cases, novel applications, and testbeds for wireless networked robotics