Cartographie et localisation simultanées multirobots

Cet article traite des problèmes de localisation et cartographie simultanées (SLAM en anglais : Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) dans un contexte multirobot. Dès lors que plusieurs robots agissent ensemble dans un même environnement, diverses questions se posent : comment localiser les robots ? Doit-on utiliser un système centralisé ? Quelles informations échanger entre robots ? La première partie de l\u27article est une vue d\u27ensemble des principaux systèmes de localisation et cartographie existants. La seconde traite des spécifications des systèmes multirobots et des stratégies de déploiement. La troisième partie présente les principales approches de SLAM multirobots avant d\u27illustrer l\u27article avec quelques exemples d\u27applications industrielles

Simulation of a particle-laden turbulent channel flow using an improved stochastic Lagrangian model

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Lagrangian stochastic modeling of the fluid velocity seen by inertial particles in a nonhomogeneous turbulent flow. A new Langevin-type model, compatible with the transport equation of the drift velocity in the limits of low and high particle inertia, is derived. It is also shown that some previously proposed stochastic models are not compatible with this transport equation in the limit of high particle inertia. The drift and diffusion parameters of these stochastic differential equations are then estimated using direct numerical simulation (DNS) data. It is observed that, contrary to the conventional modeling, they are highly space dependent and anisotropic. To investigate the performance of the present stochastic model, a comparison is made with DNS data as well as with two different stochastic models. A good prediction of the first and second order statistical moments of the particle and fluid seen velocities is obtained with the three models considered. Even for some components of the triple particle velocity correlations, an acceptable accordance is noticed. The performance of the three different models mainly diverges for the particle concentration and the drift velocity. The proposed model is seen to be the only one which succeeds in predicting the good evolution of these latter statistical quantities for the range of particle inertia studied

Numerical Description of Dilute Particle-Laden FLows by a Quadrature-Based Moment Method

The numerical simulation of gas-particle flows is divided into two families of methods. In Euler-Lagrange methods individual particle trajectories are computed, whereas in Euler-Euler methods particles are characterized by statistical descriptors. Lagrangian methods are very precise but their computational cost increases with instationarity and particle volume fraction. In Eulerian methods (also called moment methods) the particle-phase computational cost is comparable to that of the fluid phase but requires strong simplificaions. Existing Eulerian models consider unimodal or close-to-equilibrium particle velocity distributions and then fail when the actual distribution is far from equilibrium. Quadrature-based Eulerian methods introduce a new reconstruction of the velocity distribution, written as a sum of delta functions in phase space constrained to give the right values for selected low-order moments. Two of the quadrature-based Eulerian methods, differing by the reconstruction algorithm, are the focus of this work. Computational results for two academic cases (crossing jets, Taylor-Green flow) are compared to those of a Lagrangian method (considered as the reference solution) and of an existing second-order moment method. With the quadrature-based Eulerian methods, significant qualitative improvement is noticed compared to the second-order moment method in the two test cases

Cart-O-matic project : autonomous and collaborative multi-robot localization, exploration and mapping

International audienceThe aim of the Cart-O-matic project was to design and build a multi-robot system able to autonomously map an unknown building. This work has been done in the framework of a French robotics contest called Defi CAROTTE organized by the General Delegation for Armaments (DGA) and the French National Research Agency (ANR). The scientific issues of this project deal with Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM), multi-robot collaboration and object recognition. In this paper, we will mainly focussed on the two first topics : after a general introduction, we will briefly describe the innovative simultaneous localization and mapping algorithm used during the competition. We will next explain how this algorithm can deal with multi-robots systems and 3D mapping. The next part of the paper will be dedicated to the multi-robot pathplanning and exploration strategy. The last section will illustrate the results with 2D and 3D maps, collaborative exploration strategies and example of planned trajectories

Fully coupled simulations of non-colloidal monodisperse sheared suspensions

In this work we investigate numerically the dynamics of sheared suspensions in the limit of vanishingly small fluid and particle inertia. The numerical model we used is able to handle the multi-body hydrodynamic interactions between thousands of particles embedded in a linear shear flow. The presence of the particles is modeled by momentum source terms spread out on a spherical envelop forcing the Stokes equations of the creeping flow. Therefore all the velocity perturbations induced by the moving particles are simultaneously accounted for. The statistical properties of the sheared suspensions are related to the velocity fluctuation of the particles. We formed averages for the resulting velocity fluctuation and rotation rate tensors. We found that the latter are highly anisotropic and that all the velocity fluctuation terms grow linearly with particle volume fraction. Only one off-diagonal term is found to be non zero (clearly related to trajectory symmetry breaking induced by the non-hydrodynamic repulsion force). We also found a strong correlation of positive/negative velocities in the shear plane, on a time scale controlled by the shear rate (direct interaction of two particles). The time scale required to restore uncorrelated velocity fluctuations decreases continuously as the concentration increases. We calculated the shear induced self-diffusion coefficients using two different methods and the resulting diffusion tensor appears to be anisotropic too. The microstructure of the suspension is found to be drastically modified by particle interactions. First the probability density function of velocity fluctuations showed a transition from exponential to Gaussian behavior as particle concentration varies. Second the probability of finding close pairs while the particles move under shear flow is strongly enhanced by hydrodynamic interactions when the concentration increases

A consistent methodology for the derivation and calibration of a macroscopic turbulence model for flows in porous media

This work aims to model turbulent flows in media laden with solid structures according to porous media approach. A complete set of macroscopic transport equations is derived by spatially averaging the Reynolds averaged governing equations. A two-scale analysis highlights energy transfers between macroscopic and sub-filter kinetic energies (dispersive and turbulent kinetic energies). Additional terms coming from the averaging procedure and representing solids/fluid interactions and turbulent contributions are modeled. Connections between turbulence modeling and dispersion modeling are presented. Other closure expressions are determined using physical considerations and spatial averaging of microscopic computations. A special care is given to the calibration methodology for the phenomenological coefficients. Results of the present model are successfully compared to volume-averaged reference results coming from fine scale computations and show significant improvements with respect to previous macroscopic models

Experimental study of a fast gas-particle separator

A horizontal rapid gas-particle separator dedicated to the Fluid Catalytic Cracking process was tested on a small scale cold Circulating Fluidized Bed. Air (density 1.2 kg/m3, dynamic viscosity 1.8×10-5 Pa.s) and typical FCC particles (density 1400 kg/m3, mean diameter 70 mm) are used. The inlet gas velocity is kept constant at 7.3 m/s while the inlet solid loading and the separator dipleg back pressure range from 0 to 16 kg/kg and 100 to 500 Pa, respectively. Solid collection efficiency and pressure drop are studied. A model based on cyclone concepts is proposed. The solid collection efficiency increases with the inlet solid loading and reaches an asymptotic value close to 95 % when the inlet loading is above 5 kg/kg. Two flow regimes are observed in the separator dipleg through the range of inlet solid loadings, related to the available flow section modification and the interstitial gas entrainment. At constant gas collection efficiency, the separator pressure drop is maximum under single-phase flow conditions and reaches a minimum when the inlet solid loading is close to 2.5. The pressure drop increases again for higher inlet solid loading. The final modeling allows good prediction of the separator operation for all inlet solid loading conditions when the gas collection efficiency is at 100 %