CAREER: Control of Mobile Robot Networks: Integrating the Communication and Physical Domains

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Mobile robot networks are recently emerging as the most efficient way to address a large variety of tasks ranging from surveillance and search-and-rescue missions to cooperative manipulation and robotic surgery. These networks consist of large and highly interconnected groups of cheap, small and agile agents that collectively result in more modular, robust and scalable systems that can efficiently handle uncertainties, faulty components and design complexity. At the same time, the limited computation, power and communication capabilities of the agents require new communication, cooperation and specialization techniques, that raise fundamental problems on the interface of modern control theory and robotics with the discrete science of communications and networking.The goal of this project is to develop formal methods and algorithms to address the control issues related to integration of the physical (robots) and communication domains, that define mobile robot networks. In particular, the PI is developing distributed techniques to integrate robot mobility, dynamics and constraints with rich models of communication, including power control, fading, priority flows etc. Ensuring task completion, ?loop closure? with graph theoretic approaches in the literature and experimentation are major parts of this research, which offers a number of advantages over other approaches including more realistic models of robot networks that can be implemented with fewer assumptions, lower computational complexity and easiness of distributed implementation.Recent advances in robotic and communications can not be efficiently integrated on real platforms without the necessary theoretical and experimental support. This research provides these necessary components in facilitating the design of mobile autonomous systems and fostering their adoption. An integral part of the research program is also an educational agenda that involves K-12, undergraduate, and graduate level education. The broader impact of the educational program is to introduce new engineers and researchers to the potentials of multidisciplinary research as well as to promote research and engineering careers among pre-college students.