9 documents found, page 1 of 1

Wireless Sensor and Networking Technologies for Swarms of Aquatic Surface Drones

In this paper, we discuss wireless sensor and networking technologies for swarms of inexpensive aquatic surface drones in the context of the HANCAD project. The goal is to enable the swarm to perform maritime tasks such as sea-border patrolling and environmental monitoring, while keeping the cost of each drone low. Communication between drones is essential for the success of the project. Preliminary experiments...

Design of Communication and Control for Swarms of Aquatic Surface Drones

The availability of relatively capable and inexpensive hardware components has made it feasible to consider large-scale systems of autonomous aquatic drones for maritime tasks. In this paper, we present the CORATAM and HANCAD projects, which focus on the fundamental challenges related to communication and control in swarms of aquatic drones. We argue for: (i) the adoption of a heterogeneous approach to communic...

Design of Communication and Control for Swarms of Aquatic Surface Drones

The availability of relatively capable and inexpensive hardware components has made it feasible to consider large-scale systems of autonomous aquatic drones for maritime tasks. In this paper, we present the CORATAM and HANCAD projects, which focus on the fundamental challenges related to communication and control in swarms of aquatic drones. We argue for (i) the adoption of a heterogeneous approach to communica...

To err is robotic, to tolerate immunological: fault detection in multirobot sys...

Fault detection and fault tolerance represent two of the most important and largely unsolved issues in the field of multirobot systems (MRS). Efficient, long-term operation requires an accurate, timely detection, and accommodation of abnormally behaving robots. Most existing approaches to fault-tolerance prescribe a characterization of normal robot behaviours, and train a model to recognize these behaviours. Be...

Swarmanoid: A novel concept for the study of heterogeneous robotic swarms

Swarm robotics systems are characterized by decentralized control, limited communication between robots, use of local information, and emergence of global behavior. Such systems have shown their potential for flexibility and robustness [1]-[3]. However, existing swarm robotics systems are by and large still limited to displaying simple proof-of-concept behaviors under laboratory conditions. It is our contention...

Self-reconfigurable Robots -- An Introduction (book review)

SWARMORPH: Multirobot Morphogenesis Using Directional Self-Assembly

In this paper, we propose SWARMORPH: a distributed morphology generation mechanism for autonomous self-assembling mobile robots. Self-organized growth of global morphological structures emerges through the repeated application of local morphology extension rules. We present details of the directional self-assembly mechanism that provides control over the orientation of interrobot connections. We conduct real-wo...

Evolving Self-Assembly in Autonomous Homogeneous Robots: Experiments with Two P...

This research work illustrates an approach to the design of controllers for self-assembling robots in which the self-assembly is initiated and regulated by perceptual cues that are brought forth by the physical robots through their dynamical interactions. More specifically, we present a homogeneous control system that can achieve assembly between two modules (two fully autonomous robots) of a mobile self-reconf...

From Fireflies to Fault-Tolerant Swarms of Robots

One of the essential benefits of swarm robotic systems is redundancy. In case one robot breaks down, another robot can take steps to repair the failed robot or take over the failed robot's task. Although fault tolerance and robustness to individual failures have often been central arguments in favor of swarm robotic systems, few studies have been dedicated to the subject. In this paper, we take inspiration from...