ITR - (NHS+ASE+ECS) - (dmc+sim+int): Loosely Cooperating Micro Air Vehicle Networks for Toxic Plume Characterization

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Proposal Number: 0427947PI: Kamran Mohseni Institution: University of Colorado, Boulder Title: ITR - Loosely Cooperating Micro Air Vehicle Networks for Toxic Plume CharacterizationAbstract: Release of contaminants in urban areas can lead to severe public health consequences. This project develops an integrated Sensor Flock to enable rapid characterization of toxic plumes for contamination prediction and source location. A Sensor Flock consists of semi-autonomous micro air vehicles (MAVs) transporting miniature toxin sensors throughout the atmosphere above populated areas, networked to a base station providing toxin dispersion modeling and flock supervision, using novel lightweight, real-time, data-reactive wireless information routing. MAV platforms lower manufacturing costs, reduce risks of collision damage, and reduce visibility and noise that might create public alarm. The concept of Information Energy is introduced to tightly integrate advances in three interdisciplinary areas: aerodynamics, networking, and control. This enables high-quality information products from the Sensor Flock, using relatively simple individual vehicles. The MAVs are designed based on biomimetic principles of bat flight to enable exceptional flight performance. Vehicle control is based on a hierarchical information energy formulation, producing simple gradient-descent guidance laws on each vehicle, but with well-understood flock clustering behavior toward regions of high-quality data. The behavior of data-driven routing in each of the following three communication scenarios is investigated: inter-MAV exchange of high-quality data for flock convergence; MAV-to-ground collection of sensor data; and ground-to-MAV command and control. Existing disciplinary courses at CU Boulder are enriched with results from this work, expanding student multidisciplinary exposure. A summer Aerobotics program enables local high school students to participate in a design/build/fly competition integrating computer science and aerospace engineering.