Design and Field Implementation of a Communication System for Inspection Robots in Caged Broiler Houses

This study proposes and implements a hierarchical communication system for inspection robots operating in practical caged broiler houses, where confined aisles, multi-tier cages, dust, humidity, and fluctuating wireless coverage impose challenges on stable remote inspection. The system uses Jetson Orin NX as the robot-side main controller, with industrial Ethernet and RS-485 supporting onboard device access, and Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) used for device coordination, data processing, and task scheduling. At the robot-cloud interaction level, Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is used for task delivery, status feedback, alarm reporting, and environmental data upload, while a real-time preview channel and sampled key-frame transmission support video monitoring and inspection-process retention. The proposed architecture organizes the control link and data link within an end-to-end closed loop and incorporates acknowledgment, buffering, reconnection, and abnormal-state handling mechanisms to improve communication availability under weak-network field conditions. Long-term field tests in a commercial caged broiler house demonstrated that the system could maintain reliable remote command execution, continuous status feedback, stable visual data transmission, and stable environmental telemetry upload during routine inspection tasks. The results indicate that the proposed communication architecture can provide practical support for remote inspection robots in smart poultry farming scenarios.