Cost Adaptation for Robust Decentralized Swarm Behaviour

Decentralized receding horizon control (D-RHC) provides a mechanism for coordination in multi-agent settings without a centralized command center. However, combining a set of different goals, costs, and constraints to form an efficient optimization objective for D-RHC can be difficult. To allay this problem, we use a meta-learning process -- cost adaptation -- which generates the optimization objective for D-RHC to solve based on a set of human-generated priors (cost and constraint functions) and an auxiliary heuristic. We use this adaptive D-RHC method for control of mesh-networked swarm agents. This formulation allows a wide range of tasks to be encoded and can account for network delays, heterogeneous capabilities, and increasingly large swarms through the adaptation mechanism. We leverage the Unity3D game engine to build a simulator capable of introducing artificial networking failures and delays in the swarm. Using the simulator we validate our method on an example coordinated exploration task. We demonstrate that cost adaptation allows for more efficient and safer task completion under varying environment conditions and increasingly large swarm sizes. We release our simulator and code to the community for future work.Comment: Accepted to IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 201

Effects of Data Replication on Data Exfiltration in Mobile Ad hoc Networks Utilizing Reactive Protocols

A swarm of autonomous UAVs can provide a significant amount of ISR data where current UAV assets may not be feasible or practical. As such, the availability of the data the resides in the swarm is a topic that will benefit from further investigation. This thesis examines the impact of le replication and swarm characteristics such as node mobility, swarm size, and churn rate on data availability utilizing reactive protocols. This document examines the most prominent factors affecting the networking of nodes in a MANET. Factors include network routing protocols and peer-to-peer le protocols. It compares and contrasts several open source network simulator environments. Experiment implementation is documented, covering design considerations, assumptions, and software implementation, as well as detailing constant, response and variable factors. Collected data is presented and the results show that in swarms of sizes of 30, 45, and 60 nodes, le replication improves data availability until network saturation is reached, with the most significant benefit gained after only one copy is made. Mobility, churn rate, and swarm density all influence the replication impact

ABS-SmartComAgri: An Agent-Based Simulator of Smart Communication Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks for Debugging in Precision Agriculture

[EN] Smart communication protocols are becoming a key mechanism for improving communication performance in networks such as wireless sensor networks. However, the literature lacks mechanisms for simulating smart communication protocols in precision agriculture for decreasing production costs. In this context, the current work presents an agent-based simulator of smart communication protocols for efficiently managing pesticides. The simulator considers the needs of electric power, crop health, percentage of alive bugs and pesticide consumption. The current approach is illustrated with three different communication protocols respectively called (a) broadcast, (b) neighbor and (c) low-cost neighbor. The low-cost neighbor protocol obtained a statistically-significant reduction in the need of electric power over the neighbor protocol, with a very large difference according to the common interpretations about the Cohen's d effect size. The presented simulator is called ABS-SmartComAgri and is freely distributed as open-source from a public research data repository. It ensures the reproducibility of experiments and allows other researchers to extend the current approach.This work acknowledges the research project "Construccion de un framework para agilizar el desarrollo de aplicaciones moviles en el ambito de la salud" funded by the University of Zaragoza and Foundation Ibercaja with Grant Reference JIUZ-2017-TEC-03. This work has been supported by the program "Estancias de movilidad en el extranjero Jose Castillejo para jovenes doctores" funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport with Reference CAS17/00005. We also acknowledge support from "Universidad de Zaragoza", "Fundacion Bancaria Ibercaja" and "Fundacion CAI" in the "Programa Ibercaja-CAI de Estancias de Investigacion" with References IT24/16 and IT1/18. We acknowledge the research project "Desarrollo Colaborativo de Soluciones AAL" with Reference TIN2014-57028-R funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. The work has also been supported by "Organismo Autonomo Programas Educativos Europeos" with Reference 2013-1-CZ1-GRU06-14277. We also acknowledge support from the project "Sensores vestibles y tecnologia movil como apoyo en la formacion y practica de mindfulness: prototipo previo aplicado a bienestar" funded by University of Zaragoza with Grant Number UZ2017-TEC-02.García-Magariño, I.; Lacuesta Gilabert, R.; Lloret, J. (2018). ABS-SmartComAgri: An Agent-Based Simulator of Smart Communication Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks for Debugging in Precision Agriculture. Sensors. 18(4). https://doi.org/10.3390/s18040998S18

SURVEILLANCE MISSION PLANNING FOR UAVS IN GPS-DENIED URBAN ENVIRONMENT

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

The Application of Mixed Reality Within Civil Nuclear Manufacturing and Operational Environments

This thesis documents the design and application of Mixed Reality (MR) within a nuclear manufacturing cell through the creation of a Digitally Assisted Assembly Cell (DAAC). The DAAC is a proof of concept system, combining full body tracking within a room sized environment and bi-directional feedback mechanism to allow communication between users within the Virtual Environment (VE) and a manufacturing cell. This allows for training, remote assistance, delivery of work instructions, and data capture within a manufacturing cell. The research underpinning the DAAC encompasses four main areas; the nuclear industry, Virtual Reality (VR) and MR technology, MR within manufacturing, and finally the 4 th Industrial Revolution (IR4.0). Using an array of Kinect sensors, the DAAC was designed to capture user movements within a real manufacturing cell, which can be transferred in real time to a VE, creating a digital twin of the real cell. Users can interact with each other via digital assets and laser pointers projected into the cell, accompanied by a built-in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system. This allows for the capture of implicit knowledge from operators within the real manufacturing cell, as well as transfer of that knowledge to future operators. Additionally, users can connect to the VE from anywhere in the world. In this way, experts are able to communicate with the users in the real manufacturing cell and assist with their training. The human tracking data fills an identified gap in the IR4.0 network of Cyber Physical System (CPS), and could allow for future optimisations within manufacturing systems, Material Resource Planning (MRP) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). This project is a demonstration of how MR could prove valuable within nuclear manufacture. The DAAC is designed to be low cost. It is hoped this will allow for its use by groups who have traditionally been priced out of MR technology. This could help Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) close the double digital divide between themselves and larger global corporations. For larger corporations it offers the benefit of being low cost, and, is consequently, easier to roll out across the value chain. Skills developed in one area can also be transferred to others across the internet, as users from one manufacturing cell can watch and communicate with those in another. However, as a proof of concept, the DAAC is at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) five or six and, prior to its wider application, further testing is required to asses and improve the technology. The work was patented in both the UK (S. R EDDISH et al., 2017a), the US (S. R EDDISH et al., 2017b) and China (S. R EDDISH et al., 2017c). The patents are owned by Rolls-Royce and cover the methods of bi-directional feedback from which users can interact from the digital to the real and vice versa. Stephen Reddish Mixed Mode Realities in Nuclear Manufacturing Key words: Mixed Mode Reality, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Nuclear, Manufacture, Digital Twin, Cyber Physical Syste

Driving vivid virtual environments from sensor networks

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 89-95).The rise of ubiquitous sensing enables the harvesting of massive amounts of data from the physical world. This data is often used to drive the behavior of devices, but when presented to users, it is most commonly visualized quantitatively, as graphs and charts. Another approach for the representation of sensor network data presents the data within a rich, virtual environment. This thesis introduces the concept of Resynthesizing Reality through the construction of Doppelmarsh, the virtual counterpart of a real marsh located in Plymouth Massachusetts, where the Responsive Environments Group has deployed and maintained a network of environmental sensors. By freely exploring such environments, users gain a vivid, multi-modal, and experiential perspective into large, multi-dimensional datasets. We present a variety of approaches to manifesting data in "avatar landscape", including landscapes generated off live video, tinting frames in correspondence with temperature, or representing sensor history in the appearance and behavior of animals. The concept of virtual lenses is also introduced, which makes it easy to dynamically switch sensor-to-reality mapping from within virtual environments. In this thesis, we describe the implementation and design of Doppelmarsh, present techniques to visualize sensor data within virtual environments, and discuss potential applications for Resynthesizing Reality.by Don Derek Haddad.S.M