Wireless Pers Commun (2013) 70:1097–1119 DOI 10.1007/s11277-013-1119-7 In-Network Computations of Machine-to-Machine Communications for Wireless Robotics Fan-Min Tseng · Chi-Heng Lin · Kwang-Cheng Chen Published online: 23 March 2013 © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 Abstract Wireless robotics enables wide applications of service robots to benefit human life. However, effective machine-to-machine communications would be the foundation of operation. With cloud-based architecture, we innovatively demonstrate in-network compu- tation to significantly alleviate the requirement of communication bandwidth for multi-hop networking, to achieve spectrum-efficient M2M communications. We further characterize the coverage geographical of machines to impact effective operation of wireless robotics. Keywords In-network computation · Data reduction · Information collection · Networked robotics · Wireless robotics · Machine-to-machine communications · Sensor networks · Ad hoc networks 1 Introduction Migrating from manufacturing robotics and later entertainment robotics, service robot- ics attracts tremendous research interests as a new frontier of information communica- tion technology (ICT). Autonomous wireless communications among machines, known as machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, play the critical role to control these intelligent machines and to execute intelligent missions. We name robotics of M2M communications capability as wireless robotics. Typical communication capability for service robots aims at This research is supported by the INTEL Corp. and National Science Council under the contract NSC-101-2911-I-002-001. F.-M. Tseng · C.-H. Lin · K.-C. Chen (B ) Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering, and the INTEL-NTU Context Computing Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan e-mail: chenkc@cc.ee.ntu.edu.tw F.-M. Tseng e-mail: farmingtseng@gmail.com C.-H. Lin e-mail: r00942062@ntu.edu.tw 123