A Review on the Application of Natural Computing in Environmental Informatics

Natural computing offers new opportunities to understand, model and analyze the complexity of the physical and human-created environment. This paper examines the application of natural computing in environmental informatics, by investigating related work in this research field. Various nature-inspired techniques are presented, which have been employed to solve different relevant problems. Advantages and disadvantages of these techniques are discussed, together with analysis of how natural computing is generally used in environmental research.Comment: Proc. of EnviroInfo 201

Computational intelligence approaches to robotics, automation, and control [Volume guest editors]

No abstract available

Bflier's: A Novel Butterfly Inspired Multi-robotic Model in Search of Signal Sources

The diversified ecology in nature had various forms of swarm behaviors in many species. The butterfly species is one of the prominent and a bit insightful in their random flights and converting that into an artificial metaphor would lead to enormous possibilities. This paper considers one such metaphor known as Butterfly Mating Optimization (BMO). In BMO, the Bfly follows the patrolling mating phenomena and simultaneously captures all the local optima of multimodal functions. To imitate this algorithm, a mobile robot (Bflybot) was designed to meet the features of the Bfly in the BMO algorithm. Also, the multi-Bflybot swarm is designed to act like butterflies in nature and follow the algorithm's rules. The real-time experiments were performed on the BMO algorithm in the multi-robotic arena and considered the signal source as the light source. The experimental results show that the BMO algorithm is applicable to detect multiple signal sources with significant variations in their movements i.e., static and dynamic. In the case of static signal sources, with varying initial locations of Bflybots, the convergence is affected in terms of time and smoothness. Whereas the experiments with varying step-size leads to their variation in the execution time and speed of the bots. In this work, experiments were performed in a dynamic environment where the movement of the signal source in both maneuvering and non-maneuvering scenarios. The Bflybot swarm is able to detect the single and multi-signal sources, moving linearly in between two fixed points, in circular, up and down movements.To evaluate the BMO phenomenon, various ongoing and prospective works such as mid-sea ship detection, aerial search applications, and earthquake prediction were discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 17 figure

Multilevel Image Segmentation Based on Fractional-Order Darwinian Particle Swarm Optimization

Hyperspectral remote sensing images contain hundreds of data channels. Due to the high dimensionality of the hyperspectral data, it is difficult to design accurate and efficient image segmentation algorithms for such imagery. In this paper, a new multilevel thresholding method is introduced for the segmentation of hyperspectral and multispectral images. The new method is based on fractional-order Darwinian particle swarm optimization (FODPSO) which exploits the many swarms of test solutions that may exist at any time. In addition, the concept of fractional derivative is used to control the convergence rate of particles. In this paper, the so-called Otsu problem is solved for each channel of the multispectral and hyperspectral data. Therefore, the problem of n-level thresholding is reduced to an optimization problem in order to search for the thresholds that maximize the between-class variance. Experimental results are favorable for the FODPSO when compared to other bioinspired methods for multilevel segmentation of multispectral and hyperspectral images. The FODPSO presents a statistically significant improvement in terms of both CPU time and fitness value, i.e., the approach is able to find the optimal set of thresholds with a larger between-class variance in less computational time than the other approaches. In addition, a new classification approach based on support vector machine (SVM) and FODPSO is introduced in this paper. Results confirm that the new segmentation method is able to improve upon results obtained with the standard SVM in terms of classification accuracies.Sponsored by: IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing SocietyRitrýnt tímaritPeer reviewedPre prin

Disaggregated Imaging Spacecraft Constellation Optimization with a Genetic Algorithm

This research is an extension of work by Major Robert Thompson, who uses a genetic algorithm to optimize certain parameters of a disaggregated constellation for most cost-effective coverage. This work looks at imaging sensor coverage of a specific target deck assumed to exist in the Middle East. Parameters varied in this optimization affect Walker constellation characteristics, orbital elements, and sensor size. Walker parameter variables are number of planes, number of satellites per plane, true anomaly spread, and RAAN increment. All classical orbital elements are variable, although a circular, low-Earth orbit is assumed. Sensor size is varied dependent upon sensor diameter. These parameters are applied to constellations of small satellites and large satellites. The Unmanned Spacecraft Cost Model (USCM) and the Small Spacecraft Cost Model (SSCM) are used to roughly determine the cost of each proposed mission. The sensor effectiveness is determined by the General Imaging Quality Equation (GIQE)

CONTROL STRATEGY OF MULTIROTOR PLATFORM UNDER NOMINAL AND FAULT CONDITIONS USING A DUAL-LOOP CONTROL SCHEME USED FOR EARTH-BASED SPACECRAFT CONTROL TESTING

Over the last decade, autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have seen increased usage in industrial, defense, research, and academic applications. Specific attention is given to multirotor platforms due to their high maneuverability, utility, and accessibility. As such, multirotors are often utilized in a variety of operating conditions such as populated areas, hazardous environments, inclement weather, etc. In this study, the effectiveness of multirotor platforms, specifically quadrotors, to behave as Earth-based satellite test platforms is discussed. Additionally, due to concerns over system operations under such circumstances, it becomes critical that multirotors are capable of operation despite experiencing undesired conditions and collisions which make the platform susceptible to on-board hardware faults. Without countermeasures to account for such faults, specifically actuator faults, a multirotors will experience catastrophic failure. In this thesis, a control strategy for a quadrotor under nominal and fault conditions is proposed. The process of defining the quadrotor dynamic model is discussed in detail. A dual-loop SMC/PID control scheme is proposed to control the attitude and position states of the nominal system. Actuator faults on-board the quadrotor are interpreted as motor performance losses, specifically loss in rotor speeds. To control a faulty system, an additive control scheme is implemented in conjunction with the nominal scheme. The quadrotor platform is developed via analysis of the various subcomponents. In addition, various physical parameters of the quadrotor are determined experimentally. Simulated and experimental testing showed promising results, and provide encouragement for further refinement in the future