6,094 research outputs found
A mosaic of eyes
Autonomous navigation is a traditional research topic in intelligent robotics and vehicles, which requires a robot to perceive its environment through onboard sensors such as cameras or laser scanners, to enable it to drive to its goal. Most research to date has focused on the development of a large and smart brain to gain autonomous capability for robots. There are three fundamental questions to be answered by an autonomous mobile robot: 1) Where am I going? 2) Where am I? and 3) How do I get there? To answer these basic questions, a robot requires a massive spatial memory and considerable computational resources to accomplish perception, localization, path planning, and control. It is not yet possible to deliver the centralized intelligence required for our real-life applications, such as autonomous ground vehicles and wheelchairs in care centers. In fact, most autonomous robots try to mimic how humans navigate, interpreting images taken by cameras and then taking decisions accordingly. They may encounter the following difficulties
Achieving Non-Zero Information Velocity in Wireless Networks
In wireless networks, where each node transmits independently of other nodes
in the network (the ALOHA protocol), the expected delay experienced by a packet
until it is successfully received at any other node is known to be infinite for
signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) model with node locations
distributed according to a Poisson point process. Consequently, the information
velocity, defined as the limit of the ratio of the distance to the destination
and the time taken for a packet to successfully reach the destination over
multiple hops, is zero, as the distance tends to infinity. A nearest neighbor
distance based power control policy is proposed to show that the expected delay
required for a packet to be successfully received at the nearest neighbor can
be made finite. Moreover, the information velocity is also shown to be non-zero
with the proposed power control policy. The condition under which these results
hold does not depend on the intensity of the underlying Poisson point process.Comment: to appear in Annals of Applied Probabilit
Stochastic Stability of Event-triggered Anytime Control
We investigate control of a non-linear process when communication and
processing capabilities are limited. The sensor communicates with a controller
node through an erasure channel which introduces i.i.d. packet dropouts.
Processor availability for control is random and, at times, insufficient to
calculate plant inputs. To make efficient use of communication and processing
resources, the sensor only transmits when the plant state lies outside a
bounded target set. Control calculations are triggered by the received data. If
a plant state measurement is successfully received and while the processor is
available for control, the algorithm recursively calculates a sequence of
tentative plant inputs, which are stored in a buffer for potential future use.
This safeguards for time-steps when the processor is unavailable for control.
We derive sufficient conditions on system parameters for stochastic stability
of the closed loop and illustrate performance gains through numerical studies.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, under revie
Performance Modelling and Optimisation of Multi-hop Networks
A major challenge in the design of large-scale networks is to predict and optimise the
total time and energy consumption required to deliver a packet from a source node to a
destination node. Examples of such complex networks include wireless ad hoc and sensor
networks which need to deal with the effects of node mobility, routing inaccuracies, higher
packet loss rates, limited or time-varying effective bandwidth, energy constraints, and the
computational limitations of the nodes. They also include more reliable communication
environments, such as wired networks, that are susceptible to random failures, security
threats and malicious behaviours which compromise their quality of service (QoS) guarantees.
In such networks, packets traverse a number of hops that cannot be determined
in advance and encounter non-homogeneous network conditions that have been largely
ignored in the literature. This thesis examines analytical properties of packet travel in
large networks and investigates the implications of some packet coding techniques on both
QoS and resource utilisation.
Specifically, we use a mixed jump and diffusion model to represent packet traversal
through large networks. The model accounts for network non-homogeneity regarding
routing and the loss rate that a packet experiences as it passes successive segments of a
source to destination route. A mixed analytical-numerical method is developed to compute
the average packet travel time and the energy it consumes. The model is able to capture
the effects of increased loss rate in areas remote from the source and destination, variable
rate of advancement towards destination over the route, as well as of defending against
malicious packets within a certain distance from the destination. We then consider sending
multiple coded packets that follow independent paths to the destination node so as to
mitigate the effects of losses and routing inaccuracies. We study a homogeneous medium
and obtain the time-dependent properties of the packet’s travel process, allowing us to
compare the merits and limitations of coding, both in terms of delivery times and energy
efficiency. Finally, we propose models that can assist in the analysis and optimisation
of the performance of inter-flow network coding (NC). We analyse two queueing models
for a router that carries out NC, in addition to its standard packet routing function. The
approach is extended to the study of multiple hops, which leads to an optimisation problem
that characterises the optimal time that packets should be held back in a router, waiting
for coding opportunities to arise, so that the total packet end-to-end delay is minimised
Wireless Sensor Network Deployment for Monitoring Wildlife Passages
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are being deployed in very diverse application scenarios, including rural and forest environments. In these particular contexts, specimen protection and conservation is a challenge, especially in natural reserves, dangerous locations or hot spots of these reserves (i.e., roads, railways, and other civil infrastructures). This paper proposes and studies a WSN based system for generic target (animal) tracking in the surrounding area of wildlife passages built to establish safe ways for animals to cross transportation infrastructures. In addition, it allows target identification through the use of video sensors connected to strategically deployed nodes. This deployment is designed on the basis of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, but it increases the lifetime of the nodes through an appropriate scheduling. The system has been evaluated for the particular scenario of wildlife monitoring in passages across roads. For this purpose, different schemes have been simulated in order to find the most appropriate network operational parameters. Moreover, a novel prototype, provided with motion detector sensors, has also been developed and its design feasibility demonstrated. Original software modules providing new functionalities have been implemented and included in this prototype. Finally, main performance evaluation results of the whole system are presented and discussed in depth
Wireless communication, identification and sensing technologies enabling integrated logistics: a study in the harbor environment
In the last decade, integrated logistics has become an important challenge in
the development of wireless communication, identification and sensing
technology, due to the growing complexity of logistics processes and the
increasing demand for adapting systems to new requirements. The advancement of
wireless technology provides a wide range of options for the maritime container
terminals. Electronic devices employed in container terminals reduce the manual
effort, facilitating timely information flow and enhancing control and quality
of service and decision made. In this paper, we examine the technology that can
be used to support integration in harbor's logistics. In the literature, most
systems have been developed to address specific needs of particular harbors,
but a systematic study is missing. The purpose is to provide an overview to the
reader about which technology of integrated logistics can be implemented and
what remains to be addressed in the future
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