Method and apparatus to provide communication and transport for a robot of a smart community

A method, comprising:

• supplying, by a processing system, software applications and corresponding routing maps to a plurality of smart homes to configure a plurality of robots, wherein the routing maps establish boundaries of operations of the plurality of robots;
• obtaining, by the processing system, trajectory information associated with the plurality of robots;
• detecting, by the processing system, from the trajectory information that a group of robots of the plurality of robots that are in close proximity to each other and will cross the boundaries identified from their respective routing maps;
• submitting, by the processing system, a request to deploy a carrier robot to locate and transport each robot of the group of robots to their assigned smart homes;
• and
• configuring, by the processing system, operations of the carrier robot to locate the group of robots and authenticate with a representative robot of the group of robots, wherein the representative robot authenticates a remainder of the group of robots so that the carrier robot need only authenticate with the representative robot to enable transport of the group of robots to their respective assigned smart homes.

A non-transitory machine-readable medium comprising executable instructions that, when executed by a processing system including a processor, facilitate performance of operations comprising:

• supplying software applications and corresponding routing maps to a plurality of smart homes to configure a plurality of robots, wherein the routing maps establish boundaries of operations of the plurality of robots;
• obtaining trajectory information associated with the plurality of robots;
• detecting from the trajectory information that a group of robots of the plurality of robots that are in close proximity to each other and will cross the boundaries identified from their respective routing maps;
• and
• responsive to the detecting, configuring operations of a carrier robot to locate the group of robots and authenticate with a representative robot of the group of robots, wherein the representative robot authenticates a remainder of the group of robots so that the carrier robot need only authenticate with the representative robot to enable transport of the group of robots to their respective assigned smart homes.