Adaptive teams of autonomous aerial and ground robots for situational awareness

In this paper, we report on the integration challenges of the various component technologies developed toward the establishment of a framework for deploying an adaptive system of heterogeneous robots for urban surveillance. In our integrated experiment and demonstration, aerial robots generate maps that are used to design navigation controllers and plan missions for the team. A team of ground robots constructs a radio‐signal strength map that is used as an aid for planning missions. Multiple robots establish a mobile ad hoc communication network that is aware of the radio‐signal strength between nodes, and can adapt to changing conditions to maintain connectivity. Finally, the team of aerial and ground robots is able to monitor a small village, and search for and localize human targets by the color of the uniform, while ensuring that the information from the team is available to a remotely located human operator. The key component technologies and contributions include: (a) Mission specification and planning software; (b) exploration and mapping of radio‐signal strengths in an urban environment; (c) programming abstractions and composition of controllers for multirobot deployment; (d) cooperative control strategies for search, identification, and localization of targets; and (e) three‐dimensional mapping in an urban setting. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

[1]  Thomas M. Cover,et al.  Elements of Information Theory , 2005 .

[2]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  Multiagent Mission Specification and Execution , 1997, Auton. Robots.

[3]  Iwan Ulrich,et al.  VFH+: reliable obstacle avoidance for fast mobile robots , 1998, Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.98CH36146).

[4]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  Evaluating the Usability of Robot Programming Toolsets , 1998, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[5]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  An Behavior-based Robotics , 1998 .

[6]  Lynne E. Parker,et al.  ALLIANCE: an architecture for fault tolerant multirobot cooperation , 1998, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[7]  Wei Kang,et al.  Formation control of autonomous agents in 3D workspace , 2000, Proceedings 2000 ICRA. Millennium Conference. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Symposia Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37065).

[8]  Aleksandar Neskovic,et al.  Modern approaches in modeling of mobile radio systems propagation environment , 2000, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[9]  Maria L. Gini,et al.  A team of robotic agents for surveillance , 2000, AGENTS '00.

[10]  Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  Multisensor data fusion for underwater navigation , 2001, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[11]  H. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  Data Fusion in Decentralised Sensing Networks , 2001 .

[12]  Camillo J. Taylor,et al.  Sensor planning and control in a dynamic environment , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[13]  Ben Grocholsky,et al.  Information-Theoretic Control of Multiple Sensor Platforms , 2002 .

[14]  Alexei Makarenko,et al.  Decentralized certainty grid maps , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

[15]  Luiz Chaimowicz,et al.  ROCI: a distributed framework for multi-robot perception and control , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

[16]  Peter I. Corke,et al.  Networked Robots: Flying Robot Navigation using a Sensor Net , 2003, ISRR.

[17]  A. Stroupe.  Value-Based Observation with Robot Teams ( VBORT ) Using Probabilistic Techniques , 2003 .

[18]  Gaurav S. Sukhatme,et al.  Multi-Robot Task Allocation in Uncertain Environments , 2003, Auton. Robots.

[19]  Alexei Makarenko,et al.  Scalable Control of Decentralised Sensor Platforms , 2003, IPSN.

[20]  Anthony Cowley,et al.  Distributed sensor databases for multi-robot teams , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[21]  Anthony Cowley,et al.  Modular Programming Techniques for Distributed Computing Tasks , 2004 .

[22]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  Usability evaluation of high-level user assistance for robot mission specification , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews).

[23]  M. Ani Hsieh,et al.  Constructing radio signal strength maps with multiple robots , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[24]  Gaurav S. Sukhatme,et al.  Detecting Moving Objects using a Single Camera on a Mobile Robot in an Outdoor Environment , 2004 .

[25]  Daniela Rus,et al.  Experiments with Robots and Sensor Networks for Mapping and Navigation , 2005, FSR.

[26]  Kurt Konolige,et al.  Distributed Multirobot Exploration and Mapping , 2005, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[27]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Information Driven Coordinated Air-Ground Proactive Sensing , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[28]  Andrew H. Fagg,et al.  Signal Strength Coordination for Cooperative Mapping , 2005 .

[29]  Gaurav S. Sukhatme,et al.  Towards geometric 3D mapping of outdoor environments using mobile robots , 2005, 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[30]  Lynne E. Parker,et al.  ASyMTRe: Automated Synthesis of Multi-Robot Task Solutions through Software Reconfiguration , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[31]  Luiz Chaimowicz,et al.  Deploying Air-Ground Multi-Robot Teams in Urban Environments , 2005 .

[32]  Frank Dellaert,et al.  A Multifrontal QR Factorization Approach to Distributed Inference Applied to Multirobot Localization and Mapping , 2005, AAAI.

[33]  Dieter Fox.  Distributed Multi-Robot Exploration and Mapping , 2005, CRV.

[34]  Gaurav S. Sukhatme,et al.  Networked Infomechanical Systems (NIMS) for Ambient Intelligence , 2005, Ambient Intelligence.

[35]  Anthony Stentz,et al.  Learning-enhanced Market-based Task Allocation for Disaster Response , 2006 .

[36]  Kristina Lerman,et al.  Analysis of Dynamic Task Allocation in Multi-Robot Systems , 2006, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[37]  Manuela Veloso,et al.  Distributed, Play-Based Role Assignment for Robot Teams in Dynamic Environments , 2006, DARS.

[38]  James M. Keller,et al.  Cooperative Air and Ground Surveillance A Scalable Approach to the Detection and Localization of Targets by a Network of UAVs and UGVs , 2006 .

[39]  Brett Browning,et al.  Dynamically formed heterogeneous robot teams performing tightly-coordinated tasks , 2006, Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006. ICRA 2006..

[40]  Gaurav S. Sukhatme,et al.  Experiments with a Large Heterogeneous Mobile Robot Team: Exploration, Mapping, Deployment and Detection , 2006, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[41]  Vijay Kumar,et al.  Cooperative air and ground surveillance , 2006, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.

[42]  M. Ani Hsieh,et al.  Towards the deployment of a mobile robot network with end-to-end performance guarantees , 2006, Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006. ICRA 2006..

[43]  D. Caron,et al.  Design and Development of a Wireless Robotic Networked Aquatic Microbial Observing System , 2007 .