Linking Vision and Multi-Agent Communication through Visible Light Communication using Event Cameras

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel visible light communication system using event cameras for multi-agent identification, demonstrating advantages over traditional methods in simulation and real robot experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach combining event cameras and LEDs for visual identification in multi-agent systems, outperforming conventional CMOS cameras and radio communication.

Findings

Event camera-based communication outperforms CMOS cameras in visually indistinguishable scenarios.

Simulation results show superiority over radio communication in multi-agent identification.

Physical robot experiments confirm system functionality in real-world settings.

Abstract

Various robots, rovers, drones, and other agents of mass-produced products are expected to encounter scenes where they intersect and collaborate in the near future. In such multi-agent systems, individual identification and communication play crucial roles. In this paper, we explore camera-based visible light communication using event cameras to tackle this problem. An event camera captures the events occurring in regions with changes in brightness and can be utilized as a receiver for visible light communication, leveraging its high temporal resolution. Generally, agents with identical appearances in mass-produced products are visually indistinguishable when using conventional CMOS cameras. Therefore, linking visual information with information acquired through conventional radio communication is challenging. We empirically demonstrate the advantages of a visible light communication system employing event cameras and LEDs for visual individual identification over conventional CMOS cameras with ArUco marker recognition. In the simulation, we also verified scenarios where our event camera-based visible light communication outperforms conventional radio communication in situations with visually indistinguishable multi-agents. Finally, our newly implemented multi-agent system verifies its functionality through physical robot experiments.