17,415 research outputs found
Efficient Multi-Robot Coverage of a Known Environment
This paper addresses the complete area coverage problem of a known
environment by multiple-robots. Complete area coverage is the problem of moving
an end-effector over all available space while avoiding existing obstacles. In
such tasks, using multiple robots can increase the efficiency of the area
coverage in terms of minimizing the operational time and increase the
robustness in the face of robot attrition. Unfortunately, the problem of
finding an optimal solution for such an area coverage problem with multiple
robots is known to be NP-complete. In this paper we present two approximation
heuristics for solving the multi-robot coverage problem. The first solution
presented is a direct extension of an efficient single robot area coverage
algorithm, based on an exact cellular decomposition. The second algorithm is a
greedy approach that divides the area into equal regions and applies an
efficient single-robot coverage algorithm to each region. We present
experimental results for two algorithms. Results indicate that our approaches
provide good coverage distribution between robots and minimize the workload per
robot, meanwhile ensuring complete coverage of the area.Comment: In proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent
Robots and Systems (IROS), 201
A robot swarm assisting a human fire-fighter
Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for fire-fighters. The large dimensions, together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The GUARDIANS robot swarm is designed to assist fire-fighters in searching a large warehouse. In this paper we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots assisting fire-fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms that provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus, the robot swarm is able to provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the fire-fighters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire-fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm-based information to human beings
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
- …