7,205 research outputs found
Collaborative Delivery with Energy-Constrained Mobile Robots
We consider the problem of collectively delivering some message from a
specified source to a designated target location in a graph, using multiple
mobile agents. Each agent has a limited energy which constrains the distance it
can move. Hence multiple agents need to collaborate to move the message, each
agent handing over the message to the next agent to carry it forward. Given the
positions of the agents in the graph and their respective budgets, the problem
of finding a feasible movement schedule for the agents can be challenging. We
consider two variants of the problem: in non-returning delivery, the agents can
stop anywhere; whereas in returning delivery, each agent needs to return to its
starting location, a variant which has not been studied before.
We first provide a polynomial-time algorithm for returning delivery on trees,
which is in contrast to the known (weak) NP-hardness of the non-returning
version. In addition, we give resource-augmented algorithms for returning
delivery in general graphs. Finally, we give tight lower bounds on the required
resource augmentation for both variants of the problem. In this sense, our
results close the gap left by previous research.Comment: 19 pages. An extended abstract of this paper was published at the
23rd International Colloquium on Structural Information and Communication
Complexity 2016, SIROCCO'1
Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms
The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications
Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks
In this chapter, we present a literature survey of an emerging, cutting-edge,
and multi-disciplinary field of research at the intersection of Robotics and
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which we refer to as Robotic Wireless Sensor
Networks (RWSN). We define a RWSN as an autonomous networked multi-robot system
that aims to achieve certain sensing goals while meeting and maintaining
certain communication performance requirements, through cooperative control,
learning and adaptation. While both of the component areas, i.e., Robotics and
WSN, are very well-known and well-explored, there exist a whole set of new
opportunities and research directions at the intersection of these two fields
which are relatively or even completely unexplored. One such example would be
the use of a set of robotic routers to set up a temporary communication path
between a sender and a receiver that uses the controlled mobility to the
advantage of packet routing. We find that there exist only a limited number of
articles to be directly categorized as RWSN related works whereas there exist a
range of articles in the robotics and the WSN literature that are also relevant
to this new field of research. To connect the dots, we first identify the core
problems and research trends related to RWSN such as connectivity,
localization, routing, and robust flow of information. Next, we classify the
existing research on RWSN as well as the relevant state-of-the-arts from
robotics and WSN community according to the problems and trends identified in
the first step. Lastly, we analyze what is missing in the existing literature,
and identify topics that require more research attention in the future
Healthcare Robotics
Robots have the potential to be a game changer in healthcare: improving
health and well-being, filling care gaps, supporting care givers, and aiding
health care workers. However, before robots are able to be widely deployed, it
is crucial that both the research and industrial communities work together to
establish a strong evidence-base for healthcare robotics, and surmount likely
adoption barriers. This article presents a broad contextualization of robots in
healthcare by identifying key stakeholders, care settings, and tasks; reviewing
recent advances in healthcare robotics; and outlining major challenges and
opportunities to their adoption.Comment: 8 pages, Communications of the ACM, 201
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