A Low Complexity Active Sensing and Inspection System for Monitoring of Moveable Radiation Environments

Due to the portable property of moveable radiation sources, the traditional monitoring method is becoming increasingly unsuitable and it is urgent to provide an effective and low-cost method. This paper presents an active monitoring scheme for moveable radiation environments, the in situ monitoring, including a radiation detection node, an infrared proximity node, and an alarm node; these three schemes communicate with each other through the ZigBee wireless network. An active monitoring mechanism which realizes the automatic judgment of radiation source inbound or outbound state is proposed, thereby automatically switching the data sampling mode under different working conditions, so as to reduce the energy consumption of nodes. Based on the mobile terminal client application to interact with the monitoring center, a collaborative management mode between enterprise users and the environmental protection department is realized. A testbed of a simple active sensing and inspection system is created to test its user interaction capabilities. Experimental results prove that the system schedule proposed can effectively detect and dynamically monitor the moveable radiation source. The system can be easily replicated and extended to more environmental monitoring network

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Autonomous environmental protection drone

During the summer, forest fires are the main reason for deforestation and the damage caused to homes and property in different communities around the world. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, and also known as drones) applications has increased in recent years, making them an excellent solution for difficult tasks such as wildlife conservation and forest fire prevention. A forest fire detection system can be an answer to these tasks. Using a visual camera and a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for image processing with an UAV can result in an efficient fire detection system. However, in order to be able to have a fully autonomous system, without human intervention, for 24-hour fire observation and detection in a given geographical area, it requires a platform and automatic recharging procedures. This dissertation combines the use of technologies such as CNNs, Real Time Kinematics (RTK) and Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) with an on-board computer and software, resulting in a fully automated system to make forest surveillance more efficient and, in doing so, reallocating human resources to other locations where they are most needed.Durante o verão, os incêndios florestais constituem a principal razão do desflorestamento e dos danos causados às casas e aos bens das diferentes comunidades de todo o mundo. A utilização de veículos aéreos não tripulados (VANTs), em inglês denominados por Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) ou Drones, aumentou nos últimos anos, tornando-os uma excelente solução para tarefas difíceis como a conservação da vida selvagem e prevenção de incêndios florestais. Um sistema de deteção de incêndio florestal pode ser uma resposta para essas tarefas. Com a utilização de uma câmara visual e uma Rede Neuronal Convolucional (RNC) para processamento de imagem com um UAV pode resultar num eficiente sistema de deteção de incêndio. No entanto, para que seja possível ter um sistema completamente autónomo, sem intervenção humana, para observação e deteção de incêndios durante 24 horas, numa dada área geográfica, requer uma plataforma e procedimentos de recarga automática. Esta dissertação reúne o uso de tecnologias como RNCs, posicionamento cinemático em tempo real (RTK) e transferência de energia sem fios (WPT) com um computador e software de bordo, resultando num sistema totalmente automatizado para tornar a vigilância florestal mais eficiente e, ao fazê-lo, realocando recursos humanos para outros locais, onde estes são mais necessários

Advances in Human Robot Interaction for Cloud Robotics applications

In this thesis are analyzed different and innovative techniques for Human Robot Interaction. The focus of this thesis is on the interaction with flying robots. The first part is a preliminary description of the state of the art interactions techniques. Then the first project is Fly4SmartCity, where it is analyzed the interaction between humans (the citizen and the operator) and drones mediated by a cloud robotics platform. Then there is an application of the sliding autonomy paradigm and the analysis of different degrees of autonomy supported by a cloud robotics platform. The last part is dedicated to the most innovative technique for human-drone interaction in the User’s Flying Organizer project (UFO project). This project wants to develop a flying robot able to project information into the environment exploiting concepts of Spatial Augmented Realit

Reference Model for Interoperability of Autonomous Systems

This thesis proposes a reference model to describe the components of an Un-manned Air, Ground, Surface, or Underwater System (UxS), and the use of a single Interoperability Building Block to command, control, and get feedback from such vehicles. The importance and advantages of such a reference model, with a standard nomenclature and taxonomy, is shown. We overview the concepts of interoperability and some efforts to achieve common refer-ence models in other areas. We then present an overview of existing un-manned systems, their history, characteristics, classification, and missions. The concept of Interoperability Building Blocks (IBB) is introduced to describe standards, protocols, data models, and frameworks, and a large set of these are analyzed. A new and powerful reference model for UxS, named RAMP, is proposed, that describes the various components that a UxS may have. It is a hierarchical model with four levels, that describes the vehicle components, the datalink, and the ground segment. The reference model is validated by showing how it can be applied in various projects the author worked on. An example is given on how a single standard was capable of controlling a set of heterogeneous UAVs, USVs, and UGVs

Deployment, Coverage And Network Optimization In Wireless Video Sensor Networks For 3D Indoor Monitoring

As a result of extensive research over the past decade or so, wireless sensor networks (wsns) have evolved into a well established technology for industry, environmental and medical applications. However, traditional wsns employ such sensors as thermal or photo light resistors that are often modeled with simple omni-directional sensing ranges, which focus only on scalar data within the sensing environment. In contrast, the sensing range of a wireless video sensor is directional and capable of providing more detailed video information about the sensing field. Additionally, with the introduction of modern features in non-fixed focus cameras such as the pan, tilt and zoom (ptz), the sensing range of a video sensor can be further regarded as a fan-shape in 2d and pyramid-shape in 3d. Such uniqueness attributed to wireless video sensors and the challenges associated with deployment restrictions of indoor monitoring make the traditional sensor coverage, deployment and networked solutions in 2d sensing model environments for wsns ineffective and inapplicable in solving the wireless video sensor network (wvsn) issues for 3d indoor space, thus calling for novel solutions. In this dissertation, we propose optimization techniques and develop solutions that will address the coverage, deployment and network issues associated within wireless video sensor networks for a 3d indoor environment. We first model the general problem in a continuous 3d space to minimize the total number of required video sensors to monitor a given 3d indoor region. We then convert it into a discrete version problem by incorporating 3d grids, which can achieve arbitrary approximation precision by adjusting the grid granularity. Due in part to the uniqueness of the visual sensor directional sensing range, we propose to exploit the directional feature to determine the optimal angular-coverage of each deployed visual sensor. Thus, we propose to deploy the visual sensors from divergent directional angles and further extend k-coverage to ``k-angular-coverage\u27\u27, while ensuring connectivity within the network. We then propose a series of mechanisms to handle obstacles in the 3d environment. We develop efficient greedy heuristic solutions that integrate all these aforementioned considerations one by one and can yield high quality results. Based on this, we also propose enhanced depth first search (dfs) algorithms that can not only further improve the solution quality, but also return optimal results if given enough time. Our extensive simulations demonstrate the superiority of both our greedy heuristic and enhanced dfs solutions. Finally, this dissertation discusses some future research directions such as in-network traffic routing and scheduling issues

Communication and Control in Collaborative UAVs: Recent Advances and Future Trends

The recent progress in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) technology has significantly advanced UAV-based applications for military, civil, and commercial domains. Nevertheless, the challenges of establishing high-speed communication links, flexible control strategies, and developing efficient collaborative decision-making algorithms for a swarm of UAVs limit their autonomy, robustness, and reliability. Thus, a growing focus has been witnessed on collaborative communication to allow a swarm of UAVs to coordinate and communicate autonomously for the cooperative completion of tasks in a short time with improved efficiency and reliability. This work presents a comprehensive review of collaborative communication in a multi-UAV system. We thoroughly discuss the characteristics of intelligent UAVs and their communication and control requirements for autonomous collaboration and coordination. Moreover, we review various UAV collaboration tasks, summarize the applications of UAV swarm networks for dense urban environments and present the use case scenarios to highlight the current developments of UAV-based applications in various domains. Finally, we identify several exciting future research direction that needs attention for advancing the research in collaborative UAVs

Generalized software application for operation of a 3D vehicle in air, water and land

The unmanned vehicles (UV) and its applications are growing exponentially. Using the radio control is the most common way to control these types of vehicles for being a simple and cheap method to control an UV. However, it doesn’t have a visual interface that allows the user to see the vehicle’s information such as battery status, speed, distance, geolocation, etc. To deal with this problem, some mobile and desktop applications have been developed. To communicate between the control device and the vehicle, dongles are commonly used to establish the connection using radio, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. In most cases, these technologies don’t allow the user to control at long distances, Beyond Line Of-Sight (BLOS), and these applications are focused to use mostly on multi-copters, and most of the times, they only allow to connect a vehicle at a time. The purpose of this dissertation is to study the reliability of an application able to control multiple types of vehicles, such as aerial, land and water vehicles. This application allows the user to connect multiple vehicles at the same time using a single device, easily change the vehicle assigned to control, by using mobile networks to perform the communication between the developed application and the vehicle. In this way, it will be possible to connect a 3D – hybrid vehicle, which is a vehicle capable of moving in water, land and air environments, allowing the user to control the vehicle at long distances with video feedback. To achieve the purpose of this dissertation, it was developed an Android application to allow controlling the vehicle by using mobile networks to communicate. In the vehicle, besides the common electronics used in an unmanned vehicle (ESC’s, motors, batteries, controller board, etc.), it will be used a Raspberry Pi 2 model B with a 3rd Generation (3G) and 4th Generation (4G) dongle that will connect the vehicle to the internet, routing the messages coming from the controller board placed in the vehicle to the mobile application. It was also developed a server application to do the user management and exchange the messages coming from both platforms: vehicle and application.Os veículos não tripulados e as suas aplicações estão em forte crescimento. O uso de rádio controlo é a maneira mais comum de controlar estes tipos de veículos, sendo o método mais barato e simples de controlar um veículo não tripulado. Contudo, não têm uma interface visual que permita ao utilizador ver as informações do veículo, tais como o nível da bateria, a velocidade, distância, geolocalização, entre outros. Para ajudar com este problema, têm sido desenvolvidas algumas aplicações para dispositivos móveis e computadores, que permitem controlar e monitorizar este tipo de veículos. Para estabelecer a comunicação entre o dispositivo de controlo e o veículo, são frequentemente usados dongles para comunicar por rádio, Bluetooth ou Wi-Fi. Na maioria dos casos, estas tecnologias não possibilitam ao utilizador o controlo a longas distâncias, para além da linha de vista, e costumam ser focadas para o uso em multicopteros, possibilitando, na maioria dos casos, a ligação de um único veículo. O âmbito desta dissertação pretende estudar e desenvolver uma aplicação com elevada fiabilidade, capaz de controlar vários tipos de veículos, nomeadamente, veículos aéreos, terrestres e aquáticos. Esta aplicação irá permitir a ligação a vários veículos ao mesmo tempo, trocar facilmente o veiculo a controlar, recorrendo aos sistemas de comunicação móveis celulares, 3ª geração (3G ) e 4ª geração (4G) para garantir a comunicação entre a aplicação desenvolvida e o veículo não tripulado. Seguindo estes princípios, é possível controlar um veículo 3D hibrido (em modo de ar, terra e mar). Esta permite ao utilizador controlar o veículo a longas distâncias com o uso de uma transmissão de vídeo. Para alcançar o objetivo desta dissertação foi desenvolvida uma aplicação Android para possibilitar o controlo recorrendo às redes móveis celulares. No veículo, além da eletrónica habitual, para um veículo não tripulado (motores, ESC’s, baterias, etc.), será também utilizado um Raspberry Pi 2 modelo B com um dongle 3G/4G que liga o veículo, redirecionando as mensagens vindas da placa de controlo para a aplicação móvel. Para a comunicação entre a aplicação e o veículo foi também desenvolvida uma aplicação instalada no servidor que é responsável pela gestão de utilizadores e pela troca de mensagens vindas de ambas as plataformas: veículo e aplicação