Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks

In this chapter, we present a literature survey of an emerging, cutting-edge, and multi-disciplinary field of research at the intersection of Robotics and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which we refer to as Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks (RWSN). We define a RWSN as an autonomous networked multi-robot system that aims to achieve certain sensing goals while meeting and maintaining certain communication performance requirements, through cooperative control, learning and adaptation. While both of the component areas, i.e., Robotics and WSN, are very well-known and well-explored, there exist a whole set of new opportunities and research directions at the intersection of these two fields which are relatively or even completely unexplored. One such example would be the use of a set of robotic routers to set up a temporary communication path between a sender and a receiver that uses the controlled mobility to the advantage of packet routing. We find that there exist only a limited number of articles to be directly categorized as RWSN related works whereas there exist a range of articles in the robotics and the WSN literature that are also relevant to this new field of research. To connect the dots, we first identify the core problems and research trends related to RWSN such as connectivity, localization, routing, and robust flow of information. Next, we classify the existing research on RWSN as well as the relevant state-of-the-arts from robotics and WSN community according to the problems and trends identified in the first step. Lastly, we analyze what is missing in the existing literature, and identify topics that require more research attention in the future

Smart control and detection feedback for a multi-robot border control system

Using Unmanned Air and Ground Vehicles has many advantages over static cameras or personnel for securing areas. For example, they might be cheaper, can cover larger areas, are more flexible and simply don’t get tired. But using groups of UAVs/UGVs requires a smart control system. In addition, the information from the robots must be fused to provide the user with a good overview over a larger area and to avoid overwhelming him with heaps of details. In this paper we present a Multi-Robot System which uses the Battle Management Language to give high level orders and to report in aggregated task, detection, and position information. This allows the control of a MRS by a single user

A ROS-Based Framework for Simulation and Benchmarking of Multi-robot Patrolling Algorithms

Experiments with teams of mobile robots in the physical world often represent a challenging task due to the complexity involved. One has to make sure that the robot hardware configuration, the software integration and the interaction with the environment is thoroughly tested so that the deployment of robot teams runs smoothly. This usually requires long preparation time for experiments and takes the focus away from what is essential, i.e. the cooperative task performed by the robots. In this work, we present patrolling_sim, a ROS-based framework for simulation and benchmarking of multi-robot patrolling algorithms. Making use of Stage, a multi-robot simulator, we provide tools for running, comparing, analyzing and integrating new algorithms for multi-robot patrolling. With this framework, roboticists can primarily focus on the specific challenges within robotic collaborative missions, run exhaustive tests in different scenarios and with different team sizes in a fairly realistic environment, and ultimately execute quicker experiments in the real world by mimicking the setting up of simulated experiments