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

移动机器人有望在多种应用领域发挥重要作用，如协作感知目标对象或环境，协助国土安全人员安全守卫建筑物和检测入侵者或有害物质，帮助老年人和残疾人进行日常生活活动等。然而，为了充分发挥移动机器人的潜力，需要解决与感知和控制算法、网络协议、移动性管理、定位和嵌入式硬件/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，该试验台由四个不同种类的移动机器人组成，以支持和扩大机器人、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正在进行的广泛研究和教育活动。试验台包括4个Pioneer 3-DX机器人、20个iRobot Create机器人以及几台台式机和笔记本电脑，用于与试验台进行交互和控制。机器人试验台将不同的教职员工、研究人员和学生聚集在一起，以促进上述每个领域的新进展，并使研究结果得以验证，如果没有这个基础设施，这些结果是不可能的。除了为研究生提供最先进的设备进行实验研究外，开发的基础设施还提供了灵活且经济高效的试验台，用于机器人、嵌入式系统、分布式系统等本科生和研究生课程。最后，试验台也是招收高中生和少数族裔学生的有效工具，与非常成功的高中首届机器人比赛提供了极好的协同效应。

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.