Decentralized Connectivity-Preserving Deployment of Large-Scale Robot Swarms

We present a decentralized and scalable approach for deployment of a robot swarm. Our approach tackles scenarios in which the swarm must reach multiple spatially distributed targets, and enforce the constraint that the robot network cannot be split. The basic idea behind our work is to construct a logical tree topology over the physical network formed by the robots. The logical tree acts as a backbone used by robots to enforce connectivity constraints. We study and compare two algorithms to form the logical tree: outwards and inwards. These algorithms differ in the order in which the robots join the tree: the outwards algorithm starts at the tree root and grows towards the targets, while the inwards algorithm proceeds in the opposite manner. Both algorithms perform periodic reconfiguration, to prevent suboptimal topologies from halting the growth of the tree. Our contributions are (i) The formulation of the two algorithms; (ii) A comparison of the algorithms in extensive physics-based simulations; (iii) A validation of our findings through real-robot experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, submitted to IROS 201

Context-Aware Kubernetes Scheduler for Edge-native Applications on 5G

This paper is an extension of work originally presented in SoftCOM 2019 [1]. The novelty of this work reside in its focused improvement of our scheduling algorithm towards its usage on a real 5G infrastructure. Industrial IoT applications are often designed to run in a distributed way on the devices and controller computers with strict service requirements for the nodes and the links between them. 5G, especially in concomitance with Edge Computing, will provide the desired level of connectivity for these setups and it will permit to host application run-time components in edge clouds. However, allocation of the edge cloud resources for Industrial IoT (IIoT) applications, is still commonly solved by rudimentary scheduling techniques (i.e. simple strategies based on CPU usage and device readiness, employing very few dynamic information). Orchestrators inherited from the cloud computing, like Kubernetes, are not satisfying to the requirements of the aforementioned applications and are not optimized for the diversity of devices which are often also limited in capacity. This design is especially slow in reacting to the environmental changes. In such circumstances, in order to provide a proper solution using these tools, we propose to take the physical, operational and network parameters (thus the full context of the IIoT application) into consideration, along with the software states and orchestrate the applications dynamically

Data ethics : building trust : how digital technologies can serve humanity

Data is the magic word of the 21st century. As oil in the 20th century and electricity in the 19th century: For citizens, data means support in daily life in almost all activities, from watch to laptop, from kitchen to car, from mobile phone to politics. For business and politics, data means power, dominance, winning the race. Data can be used for good and bad, for services and hacking, for medicine and arms race. How can we build trust in this complex and ambiguous data world? How can digital technologies serve humanity? The 45 articles in this book represent a broad range of ethical reflections and recommendations in eight sections: a) Values, Trust and Law, b) AI, Robots and Humans, c) Health and Neuroscience, d) Religions for Digital Justice, e) Farming, Business, Finance, f) Security, War, Peace, g) Data Governance, Geopolitics, h) Media, Education, Communication. The authors and institutions come from all continents. The book serves as reading material for teachers, students, policy makers, politicians, business, hospitals, NGOs and religious organisations alike. It is an invitation for dialogue, debate and building trust! The book is a continuation of the volume “Cyber Ethics 4.0” published in 2018 by the same editors