CRI: II-NEW: Adaptive Robotic Testbed for Wireless Sensor Networks and Autonomous Systems

移动机器人被设想在各种应用领域发挥重要作用，例如对目标物体或环境的协同感知，协助国土安全人员保护建筑物并检测入侵者或有害物质，协助老年人和残疾人进行日常生活活动等。然而，为了实现移动机器人的全部潜力，需要解决与传感和控制算法、网络协议、移动管理、本地化和嵌入式硬件/软件相关的几个关键挑战。该项目涉及自适应机器人试验台的获取和开发，包括四个异构移动机器人集群，以支持和扩展机器人、嵌入式传感器系统、无线传感器网络、分布式计算系统和电源管理方面的广泛研究和教育活动。试验台包括4台先锋3-DX机器人，20台iRobot Create机器人，以及几台台式和笔记本电脑，用于与试验台进行交互和控制。机器人测试平台汇集了不同的教师研究人员和学生，以促进上述每个领域的新进展，并使研究结果的验证成为可能，没有这个基础设施是不可能的。除了为研究生进行实验研究提供最先进的设备外，开发的基础设施还为机器人，嵌入式系统，分布式系统等本科和研究生课程提供灵活且经济高效的测试平台。最后，测试平台还可以作为招募高中和少数民族学生的有效工具，与非常成功的高中FIRST机器人竞赛提供出色的协同作用。

Mobile robots are envisioned to play a significant role in a variety of application domains such as collaborative sensing of a target object or environment, assisting homeland security personnel in safe-guarding buildings and detecting intruders or harmful materials, assisting elderly and disabled individuals in daily-life activities, etc. However, several key challenges related to sensing and control algorithms, network protocols, mobility management, localization, and embedded hardware/software need to be addressed in order to realize the full potential of mobile robots. This project deals with the acquisition and development of an adaptive robotic testbed, consisting of four clusters of heterogeneous mobile robots, to support and expand a wide range of ongoing research and education activities in robotics, embedded sensor systems, wireless sensor networks, distributed computing systems, and power management. The testbed includes four Pioneer 3-DX robots, twenty iRobot Create robots, and several desktop and laptop computers to interact with and control the testbed. The robotic testbed brings together diverse faculty researchers and students to facilitate new advances in each of the above areas and enables the validation of research results that would not have been possible without this infrastructure. In addition to providing state-of-the-art equipment for graduate students to perform their experimental research, the developed infrastructure also provides a flexible and cost-effective testbed for use in undergraduate and graduate courses on robotics, embedded systems, distributed systems, etc. Finally, the testbed also serves as an effective vehicle to recruit high-school and minority students, providing excellent synergy with the highly successful high-school FIRST robotics competition.