CPS: Small: Collaborative Research: RUI: Towards Efficient and Secure Agricultural Information Collection Using a Multi-Robot System

CPS：小型：协作研究：RUI：使用多机器人系统实现高效、安全的农业信息收集

• 批准号: 1932300
• 负责人: Ayan Dutta
• 金额: $ 36.47万
• 依托单位: University of North Florida
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-03-01 至 2025-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1932300&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CPS; Small; Collaborative; Research; RUI

With the growing world population and diminishing agricultural lands, it becomes imperative to maximize crop yield by protecting crop health and mitigating against pests and diseases. Though there are decades-old practices still in place, there is also growing adoption of so-called precision agriculture solutions, which employ emerging technologies in sensing, automation, and analytics in daily farmland operations. As farmers gain real-time access to critical data (e.g., land and weather conditions) and can quickly share any untoward findings with others, farmland operations are morphing into full-fledged cyber-physical systems. To this end, this project seeks to develop, implement and evaluate a multi-robot agricultural information collection system that is autonomous, efficient and secure.This project led by the University of North Florida (UNF) and supported by the University of Central Florida (UCF) has two main goals: (i) develop and implement novel information collection techniques for autonomous mobile robots that collect, store and share data in an efficient yet secure manner using blockchain,and (ii)and to train undergraduate and graduate students to conduct basic and applied research while closely working with local farmland partners in north-east Florida. Current technologies already use robots for agricultural purposes, but they typically have a high maintenance cost and do not necessarily consider issues related to security and data integrity. The primary objective is to design and deploy a set of autonomous robots that communicate wirelessly and navigate through planned paths in order to collect valuable data. This project will also consider the threat of security attacks by which collected data can be corrupted; seeking new distributed blockchain-based consensus protocols that mitigate the adversarial influence of such attacks. This project also contains a significant research and education component leveraging the leadership of UNF in the context of a primarily undergraduate institution (RUI). Being predominantly an undergraduate institution, there is a lack of opportunity for pursuing higher degrees in the Jacksonville area. This project aligns with an established Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between UNF and UCF to provide a conduit for computing/engineering students to pursue M.S. degrees at UNF that feed seamlessly into Ph.D. programs at UCF. Students will benefit from the new robotics course to be developed at UNF and the ones being offered at UCF. Research progress will be showcased via technical workshops at both institutions to be held annually. Developed solutions are expected to transfer to other cyber-physical system applications, including search and rescue, patrolling, advanced manufacturing, among others. Most broadly, this project will raise awareness among today's teenagers and young adults of the impending agricultural crisis if worldwide food production falls even further behind meeting demands of an increasing global population.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

随着世界人口的增长和农业用地的减少，通过保护作物健康和减轻病虫害来最大限度地提高作物产量变得势在必行。尽管仍有数十年的实践，但越来越多的人采用所谓的精准农业解决方案，这些解决方案在日常农田作业中采用新兴技术进行传感，自动化和分析。随着农民获得对关键数据的实时访问（例如，土地和天气条件），并可以迅速与他人分享任何不利的发现，农田作业正在演变成成熟的网络物理系统。为此，该项目旨在开发、实施和评估一个自主、高效和安全的多机器人农业信息收集系统。该项目由北佛罗里达大学（UNF）牵头，并得到中央佛罗里达大学（UCF）的支持，主要有两个目标：（i）为自动移动的机器人开发和实施新的信息收集技术，使用区块链以高效而安全方式存储和共享数据，以及（ii）培训本科生和研究生进行基础和应用研究，同时与佛罗里达东北部的当地农田合作伙伴密切合作。目前的技术已经将机器人用于农业目的，但它们通常具有很高的维护成本，并且不一定考虑与安全性和数据完整性相关的问题。主要目标是设计和部署一组自主机器人，这些机器人可以无线通信并通过规划的路径导航，以收集有价值的数据。该项目还将考虑安全攻击的威胁，通过这些攻击收集的数据可能会被破坏;寻求新的基于分布式区块链的共识协议，以减轻此类攻击的对抗性影响。 该项目还包括一个重要的研究和教育部分，在一个主要是本科生的机构（RUI）的范围内发挥联合国基金会的领导作用。 作为一个主要的本科院校，在杰克逊维尔地区缺乏攻读更高学位的机会。该项目与UNF和UCF之间的谅解备忘录（MoU）保持一致，为计算机/工程专业的学生提供了一个追求MS的渠道。在UNF的学位，无缝地进入博士学位。UCF的项目。学生将受益于将在UNF开发的新机器人课程和UCF提供的课程。研究进展将通过每年在这两个机构举办的技术讲习班来展示。开发的解决方案预计将转移到其他网络物理系统应用，包括搜索和救援，巡逻，先进制造等。更广泛地说，该项目将提高当今青少年和年轻人对农业危机的认识，如果全球粮食生产进一步福尔斯于全球人口增长的需求，那么农业危机即将到来。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Multi-robot Information Sampling Using Deep Mean Field Reinforcement Learning

使用深度平均场强化学习的多机器人信息采样

• DOI: 10.1109/smc52423.2021.9658795
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: and Cybernetics (SMC
• 作者: Said, Tuffa;Wolbert, Jeffery;Khodadadeh, Siavash;Dutta, Ayan;Kreidl, O. Patrick;Boloni, Ladislau;Roy, Swapnoneel
• 通讯作者: Roy, Swapnoneel

Secure Multi-Robot Information Sampling with Periodic and Opportunistic Connectivity

通过定期和机会性连接进行安全多机器人信息采样

• DOI: 10.1109/icra46639.2022.9812211
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: 2022 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA
• 作者: Samman, Tamim;Dutta, Ayan;Kreidl, O. Patrick;Roy, Swapnoneel;Boloni, Ladislau
• 通讯作者: Boloni, Ladislau

Toward a Green Blockchain: Engineering Merkle Tree and Proof of Work for Energy Optimization

• DOI: 10.1109/tnsm.2022.3219494
• 发表时间: 2022-12
• 期刊: IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
• 影响因子: 5.3
• 作者: Cesar Castellon Escobar;Swapnoneel Roy;O. P. Kreidl;Ayan Dutta;Ladislau Bölöni

Secure Multi-Robot Adaptive Information Sampling

安全多机器人自适应信息采样

• DOI: 10.1109/ssrr53300.2021.9597867
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: and Rescue Robotics (SSRR
• 作者: Samman, Tamim;Spearman, James;Dutta, Ayan;Kreidl, O. Patrick;Roy, Swapnoneel;Boloni, Ladislau
• 通讯作者: Boloni, Ladislau

Towards an Energy-Efficient Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC)

迈向节能的基于哈希的消息认证代码 (HMAC)

• DOI: 10.1109/igsc55832.2022.9969377
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: 2022 IEEE 13th International Green and Sustainable Computing Conference (IGSC
• 作者: Castellon, Cesar E.;Roy, Swapnoneel;Kreidl, O. Patrick;Dutta, Ayan;Boloni, Ladislau
• 通讯作者: Boloni, Ladislau