Acoustical Ranging Techniques in Embedded Wireless Sensor Networked Devices

Location sensing provides endless opportunities for a wide range of applications in GPS-obstructed environments; where, typically, there is a need for higher degree of accuracy. In this article, we focus on robust range estimation, an important prerequisite for fine-grained localization. Motivated by the promise of acoustic in delivering high ranging accuracy, we present the design, implementation and evaluation of acoustic (both ultrasound and audible) ranging systems.We distill the limitations of acoustic ranging; and present efficient signal designs and detection algorithms to overcome the challenges of coverage, range, accuracy/resolution, tolerance to Doppler’s effect, and audible intensity. We evaluate our proposed techniques experimentally on TWEET, a low-power platform purpose-built for acoustic ranging applications. Our experiments demonstrate an operational range of 20 m (outdoor) and an average accuracy 2 cm in the ultrasound domain. Finally, we present the design of an audible-range acoustic tracking service that encompasses the benefits of a near-inaudible acoustic broadband chirp and approximately two times increase in Doppler tolerance to achieve better performance

LAVAPilot: Lightweight UAV Trajectory Planner with Situational Awareness for Embedded Autonomy to Track and Locate Radio-tags

Tracking and locating radio-tagged wildlife is a labor-intensive and time-consuming task necessary in wildlife conservation. In this article, we focus on the problem of achieving embedded autonomy for a resource-limited aerial robot for the task capable of avoiding undesirable disturbances to wildlife. We employ a lightweight sensor system capable of simultaneous (noisy) measurements of radio signal strength information from multiple tags for estimating object locations. We formulate a new lightweight task-based trajectory planning method-LAVAPilot-with a greedy evaluation strategy and a void functional formulation to achieve situational awareness to maintain a safe distance from objects of interest. Conceptually, we embed our intuition of moving closer to reduce the uncertainty of measurements into LAVAPilot instead of employing a computationally intensive information gain based planning strategy. We employ LAVAPilot and the sensor to build a lightweight aerial robot platform with fully embedded autonomy for jointly tracking and planning to track and locate multiple VHF radio collar tags used by conservation biologists. Using extensive Monte Carlo simulation-based experiments, implementations on a single board compute module, and field experiments using an aerial robot platform with multiple VHF radio collar tags, we evaluate our joint planning and tracking algorithms. Further, we compare our method with other information-based planning methods with and without situational awareness to demonstrate the effectiveness of our robot executing LAVAPilot. Our experiments demonstrate that LAVAPilot significantly reduces (by 98.5%) the computational cost of planning to enable real-time planning decisions whilst achieving similar localization accuracy of objects compared to information gain based planning methods, albeit taking a slightly longer time to complete a mission.Comment: Accepted to 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS

Internet of Underwater Things and Big Marine Data Analytics -- A Comprehensive Survey

The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) is an emerging communication ecosystem developed for connecting underwater objects in maritime and underwater environments. The IoUT technology is intricately linked with intelligent boats and ships, smart shores and oceans, automatic marine transportations, positioning and navigation, underwater exploration, disaster prediction and prevention, as well as with intelligent monitoring and security. The IoUT has an influence at various scales ranging from a small scientific observatory, to a midsized harbor, and to covering global oceanic trade. The network architecture of IoUT is intrinsically heterogeneous and should be sufficiently resilient to operate in harsh environments. This creates major challenges in terms of underwater communications, whilst relying on limited energy resources. Additionally, the volume, velocity, and variety of data produced by sensors, hydrophones, and cameras in IoUT is enormous, giving rise to the concept of Big Marine Data (BMD), which has its own processing challenges. Hence, conventional data processing techniques will falter, and bespoke Machine Learning (ML) solutions have to be employed for automatically learning the specific BMD behavior and features facilitating knowledge extraction and decision support. The motivation of this paper is to comprehensively survey the IoUT, BMD, and their synthesis. It also aims for exploring the nexus of BMD with ML. We set out from underwater data collection and then discuss the family of IoUT data communication techniques with an emphasis on the state-of-the-art research challenges. We then review the suite of ML solutions suitable for BMD handling and analytics. We treat the subject deductively from an educational perspective, critically appraising the material surveyed.Comment: 54 pages, 11 figures, 19 tables, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, peer-reviewed academic journa

Deep learning for internet of underwater things and ocean data analytics

The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) is an emerging technological ecosystem developed for connecting objects in maritime and underwater environments. IoUT technologies are empowered by an extreme number of deployed sensors and actuators. In this thesis, multiple IoUT sensory data are augmented with machine intelligence for forecasting purposes

Autonomous Vehicles

This edited volume, Autonomous Vehicles, is a collection of reviewed and relevant research chapters, offering a comprehensive overview of recent developments in the field of vehicle autonomy. The book comprises nine chapters authored by various researchers and edited by an expert active in the field of study. All chapters are complete in itself but united under a common research study topic. This publication aims to provide a thorough overview of the latest research efforts by international authors, open new possible research paths for further novel developments, and to inspire the younger generations into pursuing relevant academic studies and professional careers within the autonomous vehicle field