KDI: Coordinated Motion of Natural and Man-Made Groups

KDI：自然和人造群体的协调运动

• 批准号: 9980058
• 负责人: A. Morse
• 金额: $ 260万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-09-15 至 2004-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9980058&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: KDI; Coordinated; Motion; Natural; Man

Be it a school of fish swimming gracefully through the water, a herd of deer running through a meadow, a flock of birds flying across the horizon, or a swarm of bees circling about a hive one cannot help but wonder how these and other similar natural groupings, coordinate themselves and move so flawlessly, often without an apparent leader or any form of centralized control. What kinds of signaling must they use? What role if any, do currents, vortices, or other local environmental disturbances play in this process? Are there universal principles of coordinated group motion and if so what might they be? How might they be used to design a school of autonomous submerged vehicles, or a group of ground-based or airborne mobile robots to collectively accomplish a useful task in a coordinated manner? In broad terms, these are the questions to which this research will be addressed.More specifically, we propose to mount a cross-disciplinary assault on the joint problems of understanding how fish schools coordinate their collective motion and how schools of autonomous submerged vehicles might be designed to move in a coordinated manner. We propose to address these problems experimentally, theoretically and by means of computer simulation. At the theoretical level, our aims will be to develop models, which are biologically plausible, and, in addition, operating strategies will enable coordinated group motion of engineered systems. Our ultimate goal is not to derive analytical models nor to develop computer simulations, which are visually satisfactory, but rather to discover the underlying concepts upon which the coordination of group motion might depend. Thus, for example we would hope to develop concepts which, on the one hand might help to explain how fish maintain their spacing and, on the other might serve as guidelines for the design of groupings of man-made autonomous vehicles of all types.The experimental thrust of this research will proceed in two distinct but parallel directions. With the objective of gathering the world's first data-base documenting the long-term, three-dimensional motions of individual fish within a large school, we will take timed sequences of stereo video images of actual fish schools living in a large {1000 gallon or more} tank. We will image the responses of schools to various stimuli and under various conditions. Using advanced image/vision processing techniques, we will transform this data into a form suitable for verifying the validity of proposed behavioral and analytical schooling models. This database together with full documentation will be made available to the science and engineering communities via the World Wide Web.With the objective of trying out candidate group coordination strategies in a reasonably realistic setting, we will develop an experimental test facility consisting of a school of approximately a dozen, identical miniature underwater vehicles. These experiments are expected to be useful for both the biological and the engineering perspectives; we will be able to test robotic versions of hypothesized biology models not possible in a fish tank. Experiments with this man-made school will be carried out in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, which is available at Princeton University. Our first goal will be to instrument these vehicles so that they can function autonomously, without remote control. We will then experiment with a variety of maneuvers including group formation, cruising, bifurcating, avoiding obstacles, and changing group shapes. We will implement various biologically inspired goal-seeking strategies such as foraging as well as gradient climbing tasks relevant both to biology and to numerous engineering applications.The research we are proposing will be carried out by a cross-disciplinary team consisting of experimental and theoretical biologists together with experts in computer vision, control systems and robotics. It is our view that by means of this multi-pronged assault consisting of theoretical analysis, computer simulation, and experimentation with both natural and man-made groups, we can attain an understanding of the underlying mechanisms governing the coordinated motion of natural and man-made groups.

无论是一群在水中优雅地游泳的鱼，一群在草地上奔跑的鹿，一群飞过地平线的鸟，还是一群在蜂巢周围盘旋的蜜蜂，人们不禁想知道这些和其他类似的自然群体是如何协调一致，如此完美地移动的，往往没有一个明显的领导者或任何形式的集中控制。它们必须使用什么类型的信号？在这个过程中，洋流、漩涡或其他局部环境干扰起了什么作用？是否有协调群体运动的普遍原则，如果有，它们可能是什么？它们如何被用来设计一组自主水下交通工具，或者一组地面或空中移动机器人，以协调的方式共同完成一项有用的任务？从广义上讲，这些都是本研究将要解决的问题。更具体地说，我们建议对了解鱼群如何协调其集体运动以及如何设计自主水下车辆以协调方式移动的联合问题进行跨学科攻击。我们建议用实验、理论和计算机模拟的方法来解决这些问题。在理论层面，我们的目标将是开发模型，这些模型在生物学上是合理的，此外，操作策略将使工程系统的协调群体运动成为可能。我们的最终目标不是推导出分析模型，也不是开发出视觉上令人满意的计算机模拟，而是要发现群体运动协调可能依赖的潜在概念。因此，举例来说，我们希望开发一些概念，一方面可以帮助解释鱼如何保持它们的间距，另一方面可以作为所有类型的人造自动驾驶车辆分组设计的指导方针。这项研究的实验重点将在两个截然不同但平行的方向上进行。为了收集世界上第一个记录大型鱼群中单个鱼的长期三维运动的数据库，我们将拍摄生活在大型{1000加仑或更多}鱼缸中的实际鱼群的定时立体视频图像序列。我们会拍摄学校在不同刺激物和不同条件下的反应。使用先进的图像/视觉处理技术，我们将把这些数据转换成适合验证所提出的行为和分析学校模型的有效性的形式。该数据库连同全部文件将通过万维网提供给科学和工程界。为了在合理的现实环境中尝试候选群体协调策略，我们将开发一个由大约十几个相同的微型水下航行器组成的实验测试设施。这些实验有望在生物学和工程学的角度上都有所帮助；我们将能够测试机器人版本的假设生物模型，这在鱼缸中是不可能的。这种人造学校的实验将在普林斯顿大学的一个奥林匹克标准游泳池中进行。我们的第一个目标是为这些车辆配备仪表，使它们能够自主运行，无需远程控制。然后，我们将实验各种机动，包括组的形成，巡航，分岔，避免障碍，并改变组的形状。我们将实施各种受生物学启发的目标寻求策略，如觅食以及与生物学和众多工程应用相关的梯度攀登任务。我们提议的这项研究将由一个跨学科的团队进行，该团队由实验生物学家和理论生物学家以及计算机视觉、控制系统和机器人方面的专家组成。我们认为，通过理论分析、计算机模拟以及对自然和人造群体的实验等多管齐下的研究，我们可以了解控制自然和人造群体协调运动的潜在机制。