Collaborative Research: Teamwork vs. Congestion: The Role of Scale in Large Mobile Networks

该项目解决了通过无线通信网络协调多个移动代理的问题，以便在地理上扩展的区域内实现动态变化的任务。例如，代理可以代表收集关于时变空间场(例如，温度分布、化学浓度等)的信息所需的移动传感器，或者在感兴趣的区域内提供无线通信服务的移动继电器。智能价值：该项目的智能优点是为一类基于动态任务的运动协调问题开发了一种系统的方法来设计可扩展的、健壮的和自适应的算法，并精确地表征了闭环系统的性能以及在计算时间和网络负载方面的实现复杂性。特别是，我们有兴趣研究系统的性能和复杂性特征如何随着其维度的增长而变化，无论是在代理数量方面还是在任务数量方面。此外，我们将调查通信结构(包括网络拓扑和通信协议)的选择如何影响系统的性能。广泛的影响：新的概念框架将允许开发具有远远超过当前技术所提供的功能的移动机器人网络。能够在更大的空间范围内收集和传播信息的移动代理网络的可用性将极大地影响我们在环境监测、行星探索、搜索和救援、监视、灾害管理和国家安全等应用领域的能力。

The project addresses the problem of coordinating a number of mobile agents through a wireless communication network, in order to achieve dynamically-changing tasks over a geographically extended region. For example, agents can represent mobile sensor required to collect information about a time-varying spatial field (e.g., temperature profiles, chemical concentration, etc.), or mobile relays providing wireless communication services over a region of interest.Intellectual Merit:The intellectual merit of this project is the development of a systematic approach to the design of scalable, robust, and adaptive algorithms for a class of dynamic task-based motion coordination problems, with a precise characterization of the closed-loop performance, and of the implementation complexity in terms of computation time and network load. In particular, we are interested in examining how the performance and complexity characteristics of the system change as its dimension grows, both in terms of the number of agents, and of the number of tasks. Furthermore, we will investigate how the choice of the communication structure (including network topology, and communication protocols) influences the system's performance.Broader Impact:The new conceptual framework will allow the development of mobile robotic networks with capabilities that are well beyond those offered by current technology. The availability of possibly large networks of mobile agents, able to collect and disseminate information over an extended volume of space will greatly impact our abilities in application areas such as environmental monitoring, planetary exploration, search and rescue, surveillance, disaster management and national security.