2,506 research outputs found
A role-based software architecture to support mobile service computing in IoT scenarios
The interaction among components of an IoT-based system usually requires using low latency or real time for message delivery, depending on the application needs and the quality of the communication links among the components. Moreover, in some cases, this interaction should consider the use of communication links with poor or uncertain Quality of Service (QoS). Research efforts in communication support for IoT scenarios have overlooked the challenge of providing real-time interaction support in unstable links, making these systems use dedicated networks that are expensive and usually limited in terms of physical coverage and robustness. This paper presents an alternative to address such a communication challenge, through the use of a model that allows soft real-time interaction among components of an IoT-based system. The behavior of the proposed model was validated using state machine theory, opening an opportunity to explore a whole new branch of smart distributed solutions and to extend the state-of-the-art and the-state-of-the-practice in this particular IoT study scenario.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
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
Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare: A Systematic Review
Animals play a profoundly important and intricate role in our lives today.
Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years, but they now work
closely with us to assist the disabled, and in combat and search and rescue
situations. Farm animals are a critical part of the global food supply chain,
and there is increasing consumer interest in organically fed and humanely
raised livestock, and how it impacts our health and environmental footprint.
Wild animals are threatened with extinction by human induced factors, and
shrinking and compromised habitat. This review sets the goal to systematically
survey the existing literature in smart computing and sensing technologies for
domestic, farm and wild animal welfare. We use the notion of \emph{animal
welfare} in broad terms, to review the technologies for assessing whether
animals are healthy, free of pain and suffering, and also positively stimulated
in their environment. Also the notion of \emph{smart computing and sensing} is
used in broad terms, to refer to computing and sensing systems that are not
isolated but interconnected with communication networks, and capable of remote
data collection, processing, exchange and analysis. We review smart
technologies for domestic animals, indoor and outdoor animal farming, as well
as animals in the wild and zoos. The findings of this review are expected to
motivate future research and contribute to data, information and communication
management as well as policy for animal welfare
Energy efficient chain based routing protocol for deterministic node deployment in wireless sensor networks
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of small sensor devices, which are connected wirelessly for sensing and delivering specific data to Base Station (BS). Routing protocols in WSN becomes an active area for both researchers and industrial, due to its responsibility for
delivering data, extending network lifetime, reducing the delay and saving the node’s
energy. According to hierarchical approach, chain base routing protocol is a promising type
that can prolong the network lifetime and decrease the energy consumption. However, it is
still suffering from long/single chain impacts such as delay, data redundancy, distance
between the neighbors, chain head (CH) energy consumption and bottleneck. This research
proposes a Deterministic Chain-Based Routing Protocol (DCBRP) for uniform nodes deployment, which consists of Backbone Construction Mechanism (BCM), Chain Heads Selection mechanism (CHS) and Next Hop Connection mechanism (NHC). BCM is responsible for chain construction by using multi chain concept, so it will divide the network to specific number of clusters depending on the number of columns. While, CHS is
answerable on the number of chain heads and CH nodes selection based on their ability for
data delivery. On the other hand, NHC is responsible for next hop connection in each row
based on the energy and distance between the nodes to eliminate the weak nodes to be in the
main chain. Network Simulator 3 (ns-3) is used to simulate DCBRP and it is evaluated with
the closest routing protocols in the deterministic deployment in WSN, which are Chain-Cluster Mixed protocol (CCM) and Two Stage Chain based Protocol (TSCP). The results
show that DCBRP outperforms CCM and TSCP in terms of end to end delay, CH energy consumption, overall energy consumption, network lifetime and energy*delay metrics. DCBRP or one of its mechanisms helps WSN applications by extending the sensor nodes lifetime and saving the energy for sensing purposes as long as possible
Indoor robot gardening: design and implementation
This paper describes the architecture and implementation of a distributed autonomous gardening system with applications in urban/indoor precision agriculture. The garden is a mesh network of robots and plants. The gardening robots are mobile manipulators with an eye-in-hand camera. They are capable of locating plants in the garden, watering them, and locating and grasping fruit. The plants are potted cherry tomatoes enhanced with sensors and computation to monitor their well-being (e.g. soil humidity, state of fruits) and with networking to communicate servicing requests to the robots. By embedding sensing, computation, and communication into the pots, task allocation in the system is de-centrally coordinated, which makes the system scalable and robust against the failure of a centralized agent. We describe the architecture of this system and present experimental results for navigation, object recognition, and manipulation as well as challenges that lie ahead toward autonomous precision agriculture with multi-robot teams.Swiss National Science Foundation (contract number PBEL2118737)United States. Army Research Office. Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI SWARMS project W911NF-05-1-0219)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF IIS-0426838)Intel Corporation (EFRI 0735953 Intel)Massachusetts Institute of Technology (UROP program)Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MSRP program
A Long-range Context-aware Platform Design For Rural Monitoring With IoT In Precision Agriculture
The Internet of Things (IoT) applications has been developing greatly in recent years to solve communication problems, especially in rural areas. Within the IoT, the context-awareness paradigm, especially in precision agricultural practices, has come to a state of the planning of production time. As smart cities approach, the smart environment approach also increases its place in IoT applications and has dominated research in recent years in literature. In this study, soil and environmental information were collected in 17 km diameter in rural area with developed Long Range (LoRa) based context-aware platform. With the developed sensor and actuator control unit, soil moisture at 5 cm and 30 cm depth and soil surface temperature information were collected and the communication performance was investigated. During the study, the performance measurements of the developed Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) enabled Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) gateway were also performed
The impact of agricultural activities on water quality: a case for collaborative catchment-scale management using integrated wireless sensor networks
The challenge of improving water quality is a growing global concern, typified by the European Commission Water Framework Directive and the United States Clean Water Act. The main drivers of poor water quality are economics, poor water management, agricultural practices and urban development. This paper reviews the extensive role of non-point sources, in particular the outdated agricultural practices, with respect to nutrient and contaminant contributions. Water quality monitoring (WQM) is currently undertaken through a number of data acquisition methods from grab sampling to satellite based remote sensing of water bodies. Based on the surveyed sampling methods and their numerous limitations, it is proposed that wireless sensor networks (WSNs), despite their own limitations, are still very attractive and effective for real-time spatio-temporal data collection for WQM applications. WSNs have been employed for WQM of surface and ground water and catchments, and have been fundamental in advancing the knowledge of contaminants trends through their high resolution observations. However, these applications have yet to explore the implementation and impact of this technology for management and control decisions, to minimize and prevent individual stakeholder’s contributions, in an autonomous and dynamic manner. Here, the potential of WSN-controlled agricultural activities and different environmental compartments for integrated water quality management is presented and limitations of WSN in agriculture and WQM are identified. Finally, a case for collaborative networks at catchment scale is proposed for enabling cooperation among individually networked activities/stakeholders (farming activities, water bodies) for integrated water quality monitoring, control and management
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