Report of a wireless communication and

protocols for the Robot Challenge approach via

Bluetooth
By Lukas Miltenis
In our Lego Robot Challenge project, we were given the opportunity to
utilise Bluetooth as a means of communicating and controlling our robot.
Bluetooth is defined as: a standard for the short-range wireless
interconnection of mobile phones, computers, and other electronic
devices. by the Oxford Dictionaries (Definition of Bluetooth, 2016). It is a secure
means of wireless communication, which operates in the 2.4GHz radio
band and is perfect for short-range, low-cost and power transmissions up
to 10 metres (on the EV3 brick) or even 100 metres on different hardware
(Bluetooth Basics, 2016)
. Bluetooth networks are called piconets, and use a
master/slave model to control the devices that send and receive data. The
master coordinates communication through the Bluetooth network, it
sends data to its slaves and requests data from them as well. Slaves can
only communicate with their master (Bluetooth Basics, 2016). By agreement, the
master and slave can switch roles if needed.
We intended to use this feature as a means of starting and stopping our
program at any given time without the need of physical interaction with
the robot. To accomplish this we would use special software for our
Android phones (EV3 Mailbox Remote), which lets us send messages to
the EV3 brick. This software would establish a connection with our EV3
brick and send messages into its Bluetooth mailbox, which would then
decide whether to stop or start the program depending on the
received message. Because the Android software and the EV3 brick follow
the Bluetooth protocol stack they could interact with each other via the
Logical Link Control and Adaption Protocol (L2CAP), which is used for the
segmentation and reassembly of on-air packets (List of Bluetooth protocols 2016).
The main difference between other wireless networking (such as Wireless
LAN) and Bluetooth networking are: Bluetooth has lower range, has a
lower maximum radio band (802.11a WLAN is up to 5GHz), is considerably
slower. Bluetooth also uses less power than WLAN devices resulting in less
drain on battery, is cheaper to produce and implement. Both address
different wireless connectivity requirements (Competition or Complimentary n.d.). WLANs
and LANs in general use IP addresses to communicate between each
device on the network.
In conclusion, our team did not fully utilise Bluetooth in our project.
However if we were to, the use of wireless communication would have

increased the complexity of our project, while giving us an easier time of

issuing commands to the robot.

List of References
Bluetooth 2016, Bluetooth Wikipedia [online] available from
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth> [7 December 2016]
Bluetooth Basics 2016, Bluetooth Basics - learn.sparkfun.com [online]
available from <https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/bluetooth-basics> [7
December 2016]
Competition or Complimentary n.d., Bluetooth versus Wireless LANs
Competition or Complimentary [online] available from
<http://www.mobileinfo.com/Bluetooth/Bluetooth-vs-WLAN.htm> [7
December 2016]
Definition of Bluetooth 2016, Bluetooth definition of Bluetooth in English
| Oxford Dictionaries [online] available from
<https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/Bluetooth> [7 December
2016]
List of Bluetooth protocols 2016, List of Bluetooth protocols Wikipedia
[online] available from
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bluetooth_protocols> [7 December
2016]