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

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

GUARDIANS final report part 1 (draft): 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 re ghters in searching a large warehouse. In this paper we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots assisting re ghters. We explain the swarming algorithms which 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

Adoption of vehicular ad hoc networking protocols by networked robots

This paper focuses on the utilization of wireless networking in the robotics domain. Many researchers have already equipped their robots with wireless communication capabilities, stimulated by the observation that multi-robot systems tend to have several advantages over their single-robot counterparts. Typically, this integration of wireless communication is tackled in a quite pragmatic manner, only a few authors presented novel Robotic Ad Hoc Network (RANET) protocols that were designed specifically with robotic use cases in mind. This is in sharp contrast with the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). This observation is the starting point of this paper. If the results of previous efforts focusing on VANET protocols could be reused in the RANET domain, this could lead to rapid progress in the field of networked robots. To investigate this possibility, this paper provides a thorough overview of the related work in the domain of robotic and vehicular ad hoc networks. Based on this information, an exhaustive list of requirements is defined for both types. It is concluded that the most significant difference lies in the fact that VANET protocols are oriented towards low throughput messaging, while RANET protocols have to support high throughput media streaming as well. Although not always with equal importance, all other defined requirements are valid for both protocols. This leads to the conclusion that cross-fertilization between them is an appealing approach for future RANET research. To support such developments, this paper concludes with the definition of an appropriate working plan

GUARDIANS final report

Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for firefghters. 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 report we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots searching and assisting fire fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms which 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 one of the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus the robot swarm is able to locate itself and provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the re ghters 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

Leveraging Communicating UAVs for Emergency Vehicle Guidance in Urban Areas

International audienceThe response time to emergency situations in urban areas is considered as a crucial key in limiting material damage or even saving human lives. Thanks to their "bird's eye view" and their flexible mobility, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can be a promising candidate for several vital applications. Under these perspectives, we investigate the use of communicating UAVs to detect any incident on the road, provide rescue teams with their exact locations, and plot the fastest path to intervene, while considering the constraints of the roads. To efficiently inform the rescue services, a robust routing scheme is introduced to ensure a high level of communication stability based on an efficient backbone, while considering both the high mobility and the restricted energy capacity of UAVs. This allows both predicting any routing path breakage prior to its occurrence, and carrying out a balanced energy consumption among UAVs. To ensure a rapid intervention by rescue teams, UAVs communicate in an ad hoc fashion with existing vehicles on the ground to estimate the fluidity of the roads. Our system is implemented and evaluated through a series of experiments. The reported results show that each part of the system reliably succeeds in achieving its planned objective

Smart Vehicles, Technologies and Main Applications in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks

Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) belong to a subcategory of traditional Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs). The main feature of VANETs is that mobile nodes are vehicles endowed with sophisticated “on-board” equipments, traveling on constrained paths (i.e., roads and lanes), and communicating each other for message exchange via Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication protocols, as well as between vehicles and fixed road-side Access Points (i.e., wireless and cellular network infrastructure), in case of Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications. In this chapter we will introduce the state-of-the-art of recent technologies used in vehicular networks, specifically for smart vehicles, which require novel functionalities such as data communications, accurate positioning, control and decision monitoring

A content dissemination framework for vehicular networking

Vehicular Networks are a peculiar class of wireless mobile networks in which vehicles are equipped with radio interfaces and are, therefore, able to communicate with fixed infrastructure (if available) or other vehicles. Content dissemination has a potential number of applications in vehicular networking, including advertising, traffic warnings, parking notifications and emergency announcements. This thesis addresses two possible dissemination strategies: i) Push-based that is aiming to proactively deliver information to a group of vehicles based on their interests and the level of matching content, and ii) Pull-based that is allowing vehicles to explicitly request custom information. Our dissemination framework is taking into consideration very specific information only available in vehicular networks: the geographical data produced by the navigation system. With its aid, a vehicle's mobility patterns become predictable. This information is exploited to efficiently deliver the content where it is needed. Furthermore, we use the navigation system to automatically filter information which might be relevant to the vehicles. Our framework has been designed and implemented in .NET C# and Microsoft MapPoint. It was tested using a small number of vehicles in the area of Cambridge, UK. Moreover, to prove the correctness of our protocols, we further evaluated it in a large-scale network simulation over a number of realistic vehicular trace-based scenarios. Finally, we built a test-case application aiming to prove that vehicles can gain from such a framework. In this application every vehicle collects and disseminates road traffic information. Vehicles that receive this information can individually evaluate the traffic conditions and take an alternative route, if needed. To evaluate this approach, we collaborated with UCLA's Network Research Lab (NRL), to build a simulator that combines network and dynamic mobility emulation simultaneously. When our dissemination framework is used, the drivers can considerably reduce their trip-times