When Things Matter: A Data-Centric View of the Internet of Things

With the recent advances in radio-frequency identification (RFID), low-cost wireless sensor devices, and Web technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) approach has gained momentum in connecting everyday objects to the Internet and facilitating machine-to-human and machine-to-machine communication with the physical world. While IoT offers the capability to connect and integrate both digital and physical entities, enabling a whole new class of applications and services, several significant challenges need to be addressed before these applications and services can be fully realized. A fundamental challenge centers around managing IoT data, typically produced in dynamic and volatile environments, which is not only extremely large in scale and volume, but also noisy, and continuous. This article surveys the main techniques and state-of-the-art research efforts in IoT from data-centric perspectives, including data stream processing, data storage models, complex event processing, and searching in IoT. Open research issues for IoT data management are also discussed

Operations and control of unmanned underwater vehicles

Operations and control of unmanned underwater vehicle systems arediscussed in terms of systems and technologies, vehicles, operational deploymentsand concepts of operation. The notions underlying the specification of single vehicleoperations are contrasted to new concepts of operation to illustrate the challengesthey pose to control engineering. New research directions are discussed in thecontext of the theories and techniques from dynamic optimization and computerscience. The overall discussion is done in the context of the activities of theUnderwater Systems and Technology Laboratory from Porto University

Design of an intelligent waterway ambient infrastructure based on Multiagent Systems and Wireless Sensor Networks

Lately Maritime research areas have moved their interests from traditional ship studies and traffic systems to new areas that confer a more general character to them as, for example, environmental monitoring. BOYAS project is proposed including these new perspectives as well as more classical ones. Trying to get this integral character for the waterway ambient and its activities management, the confluence between two recent research areas is studied. The convergence of Multiagent Systems and Wireless Sensor Networks constitutes a good framework and scenario in which this new research activities may be studied and develop.Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio FIT-340000-2006-2

Coverage and Time-optimal Motion Planning for Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous vehicles are rapidly advancing with a variety of applications, such as area surveillance, environment mapping, and intelligent transportation. These applications require coverage and/or time-optimal motion planning, where the major challenges include uncertainties in the environment, motion constraints of vehicles, limited energy resources and potential failures. While dealing with these challenges in various capacities, this dissertation addresses three fundamental motion planning problems: (1) single-robot complete coverage in unknown environment, (2) multi-robot resilient and efficient coverage in unknown environment, and (3) time-optimal risk-aware motion planning for curvature-constrained vehicles. First, the ε* algorithm is developed for online coverage path planning in unknown environment using a single autonomous vehicle. It is computationally efficient, and can generate the desired back-and-forth path with less turns and overlappings. ε* prevents the local extrema problem, thus can guarantee complete coverage. Second, the CARE algorithm is developed which extends ε* for multi-robot resilient and efficient coverage in unknown environment. In case of failures, CARE guarantees complete coverage via dynamic task reallocations of other vehicles, hence provides resilience. Moreover, it reallocates idling vehicles to support others in their tasks, hence improves efficiency. Finally, the T* algorithm is developed to find the time-optimal risk-aware path for curvature-constrained vehicles. We present a novel risk function based on the concept of collision time, and integrate it with the time cost for optimization. The above-mentioned algorithms have been validated via simulations in complex scenarios and/or real experiments, and the results have shown clear advantages over existing popular approaches

Dynamic Guarding of Marine Assets Through Cluster Control of Automated Surface Vessel Fleets

There is often a need to mark or patrol marine areas in order to prevent boat traffic from approaching critical regions, such as the location of a high-value vessel, a dive site, or a fragile marine ecosystem. In this paper, we describe the use of a fleet of robotic kayaks that provides such a function: the fleet circumnavigates the critical area until a threatening boat approaches, at which point the fleet establishes a barrier between the ship and the protected area. Coordinated formation control of the fleet is implemented through the use of the cluster-space control architecture, which is a full-order controller that treats the fleet as a virtual, articulating, kinematic mechanism. An application-specific layer interacts with the cluster-space controller in order for an operator to directly specify and monitor guarding-related parameters, such as the spacing between boats. This system has been experimentally verified in the field with a fleet of robotic kayaks. In this paper, we describe the control architecture used to establish the guarding behavior, review the design of the robotic kayaks, and present experimental data regarding the functionality and performance of the system.Fil: Mahacek, Paul. Santa Clara University; Estados UnidosFil: Kitts, Christopher A.. Santa Clara University; Estados UnidosFil: Mas, Ignacio Agustin. Santa Clara University; Estados Unidos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

A survey on fault diagnosis in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) often consist of hundreds of sensor nodes that may be deployed in relatively harsh and complex environments. In views of hardware cost, sensor nodes always adopt relatively cheap chips, which makes these nodes become error-prone or faulty in the course of their operation. Natural factors and electromagnetic interference could also influence the performance of the WSNs. When sensor nodes become faulty, they may have died which means they cannot communicate with other members in the wireless network, they may be still alive but produce incorrect data, they may be unstable jumping between normal state and faulty state. To improve data quality, shorten response time, strengthen network security, and prolong network lifespan, many studies have focused on fault diagnosis. This survey paper classifies fault diagnosis methods in recent five years into three categories based on decision centers and key attributes of employed algorithms: centralized approaches, distributed approaches, and hybrid approaches. As all these studies have specific goals and limitations, this paper tries to compare them, lists their merits and limits, and propose potential research directions based on established methods and theories

Internet of Things for Sustainable Community Development: Introduction and Overview

The two-third of the city-dwelling world population by 2050 poses numerous global challenges in the infrastructure and natural resource management domains (e.g., water and food scarcity, increasing global temperatures, and energy issues). The IoT with integrated sensing and communication capabilities has the strong potential for the robust, sustainable, and informed resource management in the urban and rural communities. In this chapter, the vital concepts of sustainable community development are discussed. The IoT and sustainability interactions are explained with emphasis on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and communication technologies. Moreover, IoT opportunities and challenges are discussed in the context of sustainable community development