Zero-Delay Roaming for Mobile Robots enabled by Wireless TSN Redundancy

[Abstract] Mobile and autonomous robots are among the most critical technology applications requiring wireless connectivity with deterministic performance, including bounded latency with high reliability, even under congested network conditions. Emerging Wireless Time-Sensitive Networking (WTSN) capabilities over Wi-Fi and 5G can enable time synchronisation and bounded low latency through time-aware scheduling mechanisms. Such Wireless TSN capabilities have been demonstrated in several industrial/robotic use cases, but under static conditions. Mobility introduces new challenges due to the roaming events and associ- ated network outages owing to signaling between client devices and network infrastructure during these events. In this paper, we show how we can take advantage of the TSN redundancy capability (as defined in the IEEE 802.1CB standard) to eliminate outages or delays due to events like roaming and interference in a mobile robot use case enabled by Wi-Fi 6 TSN. We demonstrate the roaming performance with no delay impact on the applications though simulations of a mobile robot in a factory scenario and experimental results with a mobile robot connected via multiple Wi-Fi 6 radios in a warehouse environment.