CAREER: Solar-Powered Unmanned Aerial and Ground Vehicles for Long-Term Operation in Dynamic Environments

目前太阳能机器人系统的技术仅限于同类机器人，它们在设计的限制下独立行动，受到功率限制和无法智能地适应多变的情况。这些限制阻碍了太阳能机器人在应用中的广泛采用。这个职业项目提出了一种革命性的方法来开发下一代太阳能驱动的机器人系统，以克服这些限制。一种创新的战略将整合不同类型的空中和地面车辆作业，以完成长期、高效的任务，提高对动态环境的适应能力，并能够有效利用环境但可变的能源。这项工作的结果将使环境监测、搜救、监测和农业方面取得具有社会重要性的技术进步，这将有助于美国的经济活力、公共卫生和安全。这项研究还提供了有关在长时间作业期间减轻机器人任务对不可再生能源的依赖的一般机器人应用的必要见解。太阳能机器人的使用和应用增加了对高质量光伏产品的需求，这将促进相关技术的发展。这项工作将纳入适合不同学生群体的教育活动的层次结构，从普通公众到更高级的学者。这些活动包括基于协同效应的教育平台、面向行业的培训项目以及太阳能机器人的教育开源软件。PI将与爱荷华州立大学激励竞争研究团队的实验计划合作，为公众访问者，特别是社区大学和K-12学生提供访问机器人系统的机会。这项研究将有助于建立一种新的范式，使能够在节能的长时间自主多平台系统上进行实验。在太阳能机器人系统中建立先进的自主性将通过利用动态网络、分布式控制和凸优化领域的跨学科方法，并通过开发新的战略来协调和控制不同的空中和地面车辆来完成任务。这些多学科方法将被一致地整合在一起，为太阳能驱动的机器人系统的建模、优化和分布式控制产生一个新的范例。该项目将系统地将太阳能注入一个要求苛刻的技术领域，即机器人系统，并将其具体应用于广域长时间作业。所提出的优化和控制方案将解决多智能体动态系统的基本问题，其性能可以通过内部智能体之间的合作来提高。

Current technology in solar-powered robotic systems is limited to homogeneous robots that act independently within the constraints of their design and are subject to power limitations and inability to intelligently adapt to changeable situations. These limitations prevent the widespread adoption of solar robots in applications. This career project proposes a transformative approach to the development of next generation solar-powered robotic systems that overcome these limitations. An innovative strategy will integrate heterogeneous aerial and ground vehicle operations in order to accomplish long-duration high-efficiency missions, improve adaptability to dynamic environments, and enable the effective use of environmental but variable energy sources. Results of this work will enable societally-important technological advancements in environmental monitoring, search and rescue, surveillance, and agriculture, which will contribute to U.S. economic vitality, public health, and security. This research also provides necessary insights into general robotics applications pertaining to alleviating the dependence of robotic missions on non-renewable energy sources during long-duration operations. The use and application of solar-powered robots increases the demand for high-quality photovoltaic products, which will subsequently boost development in related technologies. This work will incorporate a hierarchy of educational activities appropriate to different groups of students, from the general public to more advanced scholars. These activities include a synergy-based education platform, industry-oriented training projects, and educational open-source software for a solar robot. In collaboration with the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research team at Iowa State University, the PI will provide public visitors, especially community college and K-12 students, with access to robotic systems.The research will contribute to a novel paradigm enabling experimentation on energy-aware long-duration autonomous multi-platform systems. Establishing advanced autonomy in solar-powered robotic systems will be accomplished by leveraging interdisciplinary methodologies in the fields of dynamic networks, distributed control, and convex optimization, and by developing novel strategies for coordinating and controlling heterogeneous aerial and ground vehicles toward mission accomplishment. These multidisciplinary methodologies will be consistently integrated to yield a new paradigm for modeling, optimization, and distributed control of solar-powered robotic systems. The project will systematically infuse solar energy into a demanding technological area, namely robotic systems, with specific applications to wide-area long-duration operations. The proposed optimization and control schemes will address fundamental problems of multi-agent dynamical systems whose performance can be improved by cooperation among internal agents.