An Approach to Cooperative, Wide Area Visual Navigation by Leveraging Blockchain Consensus
Damian M. Lyons, Mohamed Rahouti · 2023
This work presents WAVN (Wide Area Visual Navigation) for mobile robot teams, targeting small-scale precision agriculture which requires long-term deployment, adaptability to environmental changes, GPS independence, and low computational needs. WAVN allows robots to use shared visual data for cooperative navigation towards destinations beyond their initial view. We introduce a unique integration of navigation and blockchain, using a robot-centric blockchain consensus based on shared visual landmarks. This innovation enhances the navigability of the ledger, streamlines the WAVN algorithm. The performance results from both robots and simulations confirm the efficiency gains through cooperation.