12,087 research outputs found
Trading Safety Versus Performance: Rapid Deployment of Robotic Swarms with Robust Performance Constraints
In this paper we consider a stochastic deployment problem, where a robotic
swarm is tasked with the objective of positioning at least one robot at each of
a set of pre-assigned targets while meeting a temporal deadline. Travel times
and failure rates are stochastic but related, inasmuch as failure rates
increase with speed. To maximize chances of success while meeting the deadline,
a control strategy has therefore to balance safety and performance. Our
approach is to cast the problem within the theory of constrained Markov
Decision Processes, whereby we seek to compute policies that maximize the
probability of successful deployment while ensuring that the expected duration
of the task is bounded by a given deadline. To account for uncertainties in the
problem parameters, we consider a robust formulation and we propose efficient
solution algorithms, which are of independent interest. Numerical experiments
confirming our theoretical results are presented and discussed
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
Cooperative Task Planning of Multi-Agent Systems Under Timed Temporal Specifications
In this paper the problem of cooperative task planning of multi-agent systems
when timed constraints are imposed to the system is investigated. We consider
timed constraints given by Metric Interval Temporal Logic (MITL). We propose a
method for automatic control synthesis in a two-stage systematic procedure.
With this method we guarantee that all the agents satisfy their own individual
task specifications as well as that the team satisfies a team global task
specification.Comment: Submitted to American Control Conference 201
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