Autonomous Vehicle Coordination with Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks

A coordinated team of mobile wireless sensor and actuator nodes can bring numerous benefits for various applications in the field of cooperative surveillance, mapping unknown areas, disaster management, automated highway and space exploration. This article explores the idea of mobile nodes using vehicles on wheels, augmented with wireless, sensing, and control capabilities. One of the vehicles acts as a leader, being remotely driven by the user, the others represent the followers. Each vehicle has a low-power wireless sensor node attached, featuring a 3D accelerometer and a magnetic compass. Speed and orientation are computed in real time using inertial navigation techniques. The leader periodically transmits these measures to the followers, which implement a lightweight fuzzy logic controller for imitating the leader's movement pattern. We report in detail on all development phases, covering design, simulation, controller tuning, inertial sensor evaluation, calibration, scheduling, fixed-point computation, debugging, benchmarking, field experiments, and lessons learned

Comprehensive review on controller for leader-follower robotic system

985-1007This paper presents a comprehensive review of the leader-follower robotics system. The aim of this paper is to find and elaborate on the current trends in the swarm robotic system, leader-follower, and multi-agent system. Another part of this review will focus on finding the trend of controller utilized by previous researchers in the leader-follower system. The controller that is commonly applied by the researchers is mostly adaptive and non-linear controllers. The paper also explores the subject of study or system used during the research which normally employs multi-robot, multi-agent, space flying, reconfigurable system, multi-legs system or unmanned system. Another aspect of this paper concentrates on the topology employed by the researchers when they conducted simulation or experimental studies

A Multi-robot System Coordination Design and Analysis on Wall Follower Robot Group

In this research, multi-robot formation can be established according to the environment or workspace. Group of robots will move sequently if there is no space for robots to stand side by side. Leader robot will be on the front of all robots and follow the right wall. On the other hand, robots will move side by side if there is a large space between them. Leader robot will be tracked the wall on its right side and follow on it while every follower moves side by side. The leader robot have to broadcast the information to all robots in the group in radius 9 meters. Nevertheless, every robot should be received information from leader robot to define their movements in the area. The error provided by fuzzy output process which is caused by read data from ultrasound sensor will drive to more time process. More sampling can reduce the error but it will drive more execution time. Furthermore, coordination time will need longer time and delay. Formation will not be establisehed if packet error happened in the communication process because robot will execute wrong command

A Survey and Analysis of Cooperative Multi-Agent Robot Systems: Challenges and Directions

Research in the area of cooperative multi-agent robot systems has received wide attention among researchers in recent years. The main concern is to find the effective coordination among autonomous agents to perform the task in order to achieve a high quality of overall performance. Therefore, this paper reviewed various selected literatures primarily from recent conference proceedings and journals related to cooperation and coordination of multi-agent robot systems (MARS). The problems, issues, and directions of MARS research have been investigated in the literature reviews. Three main elements of MARS which are the type of agents, control architectures, and communications were discussed thoroughly in the beginning of this paper. A series of problems together with the issues were analyzed and reviewed, which included centralized and decentralized control, consensus, containment, formation, task allocation, intelligences, optimization and communications of multi-agent robots. Since the research in the field of multi-agent robot research is expanding, some issues and future challenges in MARS are recalled, discussed and clarified with future directions. Finally, the paper is concluded with some recommendations with respect to multi-agent systems

Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio

Intelligent manipulation technique for multi-branch robotic systems

New analytical development in kinematics planning is reported. The INtelligent KInematics Planner (INKIP) consists of the kinematics spline theory and the adaptive logic annealing process. Also, a novel framework of robot learning mechanism is introduced. The FUzzy LOgic Self Organized Neural Networks (FULOSONN) integrates fuzzy logic in commands, control, searching, and reasoning, the embedded expert system for nominal robotics knowledge implementation, and the self organized neural networks for the dynamic knowledge evolutionary process. Progress on the mechanical construction of SRA Advanced Robotic System (SRAARS) and the real time robot vision system is also reported. A decision was made to incorporate the Local Area Network (LAN) technology in the overall communication system