Energy-aware strategies in real-time systems for autonomous robots

Most battery operated robots have to work under timing constraints to exhibit a desired performance and must adopt suitable control strategies to minimize energy consumption to prolong their lifetime. Unfortunately, energy saving strategies tend to reduce resource availability and, hence, degrade robot performance. As a consequence, an integrated approach is needed for balancing energy consumption with real-time requirements. In this paper, we present an integrated approach to energy management in real-time robot systems to prolong battery lifetime and still guarantee timing constraints. The method is applied to a six-legged robot controlled by a PC104 microprocessor and equipped with a set of sensors for the interaction with the environment. Specific experiments are reported to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.