Adoption of vehicular ad hoc networking protocols by networked robots

This paper focuses on the utilization of wireless networking in the robotics domain. Many researchers have already equipped their robots with wireless communication capabilities, stimulated by the observation that multi-robot systems tend to have several advantages over their single-robot counterparts. Typically, this integration of wireless communication is tackled in a quite pragmatic manner, only a few authors presented novel Robotic Ad Hoc Network (RANET) protocols that were designed specifically with robotic use cases in mind. This is in sharp contrast with the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). This observation is the starting point of this paper. If the results of previous efforts focusing on VANET protocols could be reused in the RANET domain, this could lead to rapid progress in the field of networked robots. To investigate this possibility, this paper provides a thorough overview of the related work in the domain of robotic and vehicular ad hoc networks. Based on this information, an exhaustive list of requirements is defined for both types. It is concluded that the most significant difference lies in the fact that VANET protocols are oriented towards low throughput messaging, while RANET protocols have to support high throughput media streaming as well. Although not always with equal importance, all other defined requirements are valid for both protocols. This leads to the conclusion that cross-fertilization between them is an appealing approach for future RANET research. To support such developments, this paper concludes with the definition of an appropriate working plan

Aerial Networking for the Implementation of Cooperative Control on Small Unmanned Aerial Systems

The employment of Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS) for reconnaissance and surveillance missions is a vital capability of the United States military. Cooperative control algorithms for SUAS can enable tactical multi-vehicle configurations for communications extension, intelligent navigation, and a multitude of other applications. Past research at AFIT has designed and simulated a cooperative rover-relay algorithm for extended communications and has investigated its implementation through various modem configurations. This research explores aerial networking options for implementing cooperative control and applies them to an actual SUAS. Using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware, a system was designed and flight tested to implement the rover-relay algorithm and provide a testbed system for future research in cooperative control. Two different modem configurations were designed and tested. The first modem configuration was demonstrated through a series of ground and flight tests to successfully relay autopilot commands and telemetry between a ground station and a rover aircraft through a relay aircraft. This configuration effectively doubles the effective range of the rover system to 1.2 miles, together with an algorithm that autonomously navigates the relay aircraft to an optimal location. Secondly, a mesh network was configured and tested. This configuration successfully relayed aircraft telemetry to the ground station from each vehicle in the network. However, the network suffered from low throughput, which limited autopilot functionality, such as updating navigation waypoints to each aircraft. The results suggest the system be updated with more capable modems in a mesh configuration to broaden the possibilities for future research in cooperative applications

Routing schemes in FANETs: a survey

Flying ad hoc network (FANET) is a self-organizing wireless network that enables inexpensive, flexible, and easy-to-deploy flying nodes, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), to communicate among themselves in the absence of fixed network infrastructure. FANET is one of the emerging networks that has an extensive range of next-generation applications. Hence, FANET plays a significant role in achieving application-based goals. Routing enables the flying nodes to collaborate and coordinate among themselves and to establish routes to radio access infrastructure, particularly FANET base station (BS). With a longer route lifetime, the effects of link disconnections and network partitions reduce. Routing must cater to two main characteristics of FANETs that reduce the route lifetime. Firstly, the collaboration nature requires the flying nodes to exchange messages and to coordinate among themselves, causing high energy consumption. Secondly, the mobility pattern of the flying nodes is highly dynamic in a three-dimensional space and they may be spaced far apart, causing link disconnection. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the limited research work of routing schemes in FANETs. Different aspects, including objectives, challenges, routing metrics, characteristics, and performance measures, are covered. Furthermore, we present open issues

A distributed architecture for unmanned aerial systems based on publish/subscribe messaging and simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) testbed

A dissertation submitted in fulfilment for the degree of Master of Science. School of Computational and Applied Mathematics, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, November 2017The increased capabilities and lower cost of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) unveil big opportunities for a rapidly growing number of civilian and commercial applications. Some missions require direct control using a receiver in a point-to-point connection, involving one or very few MAVs. An alternative class of mission is remotely controlled, with the control of the drone automated to a certain extent using mission planning software and autopilot systems. For most emerging missions, there is a need for more autonomous, cooperative control of MAVs, as well as more complex data processing from sensors like cameras and laser scanners. In the last decade, this has given rise to an extensive research from both academia and industry. This research direction applies robotics and computer vision concepts to Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs). However, UASs are often designed for specific hardware and software, thus providing limited integration, interoperability and re-usability across different missions. In addition, there are numerous open issues related to UAS command, control and communication(C3), and multi-MAVs. We argue and elaborate throughout this dissertation that some of the recent standardbased publish/subscribe communication protocols can solve many of these challenges and meet the non-functional requirements of MAV robotics applications. This dissertation assesses the MQTT, DDS and TCPROS protocols in a distributed architecture of a UAS control system and Ground Control Station software. While TCPROS has been the leading robotics communication transport for ROS applications, MQTT and DDS are lightweight enough to be used for data exchange between distributed systems of aerial robots. Furthermore, MQTT and DDS are based on industry standards to foster communication interoperability of “things”. Both protocols have been extensively presented to address many of today’s needs related to networks based on the internet of things (IoT). For example, MQTT has been used to exchange data with space probes, whereas DDS was employed for aerospace defence and applications of smart cities. We designed and implemented a distributed UAS architecture based on each publish/subscribe protocol TCPROS, MQTT and DDS. The proposed communication systems were tested with a vision-based Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) system involving three Parrot AR Drone2 MAVs. Within the context of this study, MQTT and DDS messaging frameworks serve the purpose of abstracting UAS complexity and heterogeneity. Additionally, these protocols are expected to provide low-latency communication and scale up to meet the requirements of real-time remote sensing applications. The most important contribution of this work is the implementation of a complete distributed communication architecture for multi-MAVs. Furthermore, we assess the viability of this architecture and benchmark the performance of the protocols in relation to an autonomous quadcopter navigation testbed composed of a SLAM algorithm, an extended Kalman filter and a PID controller.XL201

Communication and Control in Collaborative UAVs: Recent Advances and Future Trends

The recent progress in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) technology has significantly advanced UAV-based applications for military, civil, and commercial domains. Nevertheless, the challenges of establishing high-speed communication links, flexible control strategies, and developing efficient collaborative decision-making algorithms for a swarm of UAVs limit their autonomy, robustness, and reliability. Thus, a growing focus has been witnessed on collaborative communication to allow a swarm of UAVs to coordinate and communicate autonomously for the cooperative completion of tasks in a short time with improved efficiency and reliability. This work presents a comprehensive review of collaborative communication in a multi-UAV system. We thoroughly discuss the characteristics of intelligent UAVs and their communication and control requirements for autonomous collaboration and coordination. Moreover, we review various UAV collaboration tasks, summarize the applications of UAV swarm networks for dense urban environments and present the use case scenarios to highlight the current developments of UAV-based applications in various domains. Finally, we identify several exciting future research direction that needs attention for advancing the research in collaborative UAVs

Design of Ad Hoc Wireless Mesh Networks Formed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with Advanced Mechanical Automation

Ad hoc wireless mesh networks formed by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with wireless transceivers (access points (APs)) are increasingly being touted as being able to provide a flexible "on-the-fly" communications infrastructure that can collect and transmit sensor data from sensors in remote, wilderness, or disaster-hit areas. Recent advances in the mechanical automation of UAVs have resulted in separable APs and replaceable batteries that can be carried by UAVs and placed at arbitrary locations in the field. These advanced mechanized UAV mesh networks pose interesting questions in terms of the design of the network architecture and the optimal UAV scheduling algorithms. This paper studies a range of network architectures that depend on the mechanized automation (AP separation and battery replacement) capabilities of UAVs and proposes heuristic UAV scheduling algorithms for each network architecture, which are benchmarked against optimal designs.Comment: 12 page