Internet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: QoS Provisioning in Aerial Ad-Hoc Networks

Aerial ad-hoc networks have the potential to enable smart services while maintaining communication between the ground system and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Previous research has focused on enabling aerial data-centric smart services while integrating the benefits of aerial objects such as UAVs in hostile and non-hostile environments. Quality of service (QoS) provisioning in UAV-assisted communication is a challenging research theme in aerial ad-hoc networks environments. Literature on aerial ad hoc networks lacks cooperative service-oriented modeling for distributed network environments, relying on costly static base station-oriented centralized network environments. Towards this end, this paper proposes a quality of service provisioning framework for a UAV-assisted aerial ad hoc network environment (QSPU) focusing on reliable aerial communication. The UAV’s aerial mobility and service parameters are modelled considering highly dynamic aerial ad-hoc environments. UAV-centric mobility models are utilized to develop a complete aerial routing framework. A comparative performance evaluation demonstrates the benefits of the proposed aerial communication framework. It is evident that QSPU outperforms the state-of-the-art techniques in terms of a number of service-oriented performance metrics in a UAV-assisted aerial ad-hoc network environment

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

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