A Comparison of Lightweight Communication Protocols in Robotic Applications

Robot communication is an essential element in robot operation. There are several protocols that serve robot communication applications, but the protocols used are not optimized for mobile and battery-operated robots. To operate in such condition, an optimized protocol for such environment must be used. This paper will evaluate Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) and MQ Telemetry Transport for Sensor Nodes (MQTT-SN) which are designed for such devices. Result from experiment shows that MQTT-SN performs 30% faster than CoAP when transmitting the same payload.