The XBee devices are radio modules that allow two modules to communicate with each other. The objective for Terrabots is to establish a network of robots and have them communicate with each other for coordination purposes.
The best way to go about understanding Xbee is to look up the Sparkfun documentation, obtain two Explorer modules, which allow for direct USB-to-XBee interfacing. This is possible with the download of XCTU, software made by the creators of XBee for the purpose of interfacing with the modules.
Otherwise, direct serial communication can be performed by declaring the modules as Serial objects, then setting the reset high (?). It is unclear whether or not the supposed “configureMode” and “getSerialNumber” options in a XBee library for mBed are required for functionality.
What I learned is that a buffer needs to be created prior to sending and receiving data; this creates sufficient space for the transfer.
Unfortunately, no significant progress has been made on XBee; multiple methods have been attempted to interface with 3 XBee modules. We suspect there is a hardware issue, but there is no way to truly debug the devices until two Explorer modules are obtained for the XCTU software.