Embedding a robot with a companion computer is becoming a common practice nowadays. Such computer is installed with an operatingsystem, often a Linux distribution. Moreover, Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) can be embedded on a robot, giving it the capacity of performing complex on-board computing tasks while executing a mission. It seems that a next logical transition, consist of deploying a cluster of computers among embedded computing cards. With this approach, a multi-robot system can be set as a High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster. The advantages of such infrastructure are many, from providing higher computing power up to setting scalable multi-robot systems. While HPC has been always seen as a speeding-up tool, we believe that HPC in the world of robotics can do much more than simply accelerating the execution of complex computing tasks. In this paper, we introduce the novel concept of High Performance Robotic Computing — HPRC, an augmentation of the ideas behind traditional HPC to fit and enhance the world of robotics. As a proof of concept, we introduce novel HPC software developed to control the motion of a set of robots using the standard parallel MPI (Message Passing Interface) library. The parallel motion software includes two operation modes: Parallel motion to specific target and swarm-like behavior. Furthermore, the HPC software is virtually scalable to control any quantity of moving robots, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Unmanned Ground Vehicles, etc.

Peer Reviewed