All-terrain Robot Platform for Sparse Swarm Applications

适用于稀疏群应用的全地形机器人平台

• 批准号: 2115210
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Southampton
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2018 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2115210
• 关键词: terrain; Robot; Platform; Sparse; Swarm

Robots swarms are teams of robots that collaborate to perform an assigned task. However, a common feature of existing swarms is the underlying assumption that the robots act in close proximity to each other. As a consequence, existing swarms are ill suited for real world outdoor applications: the required density of robots is unrealistic, undesirable, and unaffordable over the area to be covered in any potential real application scenario.The aim of this project is to bridge the gap from the extensive swarm robot research carried out in simulation and with table-top robots to practical applications such as environmental monitoring, sensing for precision agriculture, perimeter security, and infrastructure monitoring.Key to bridging this gap is the concept of a sparse swarm in which the robots coordinate over long distances (hundreds of meters), but do never physically meet to execute their tasks. The specific formal constraints that arise from this situation require a different perspective in algorithm development and open up distinct research opportunities. To guide the constraints of the theoretical work and validate its practicality, a robot platform is required that combines long endurance all-terrain capability with long-range communication at a cost that allows for experiments with groups of robots.This PhD project will exploit state-of-the-art battery and brushless motor technology with recently introduced low-cost long-range communication technology (LoRaWAN) to develop an affordable open-hardware platform for an autonomous ground vehicle targeted at the challenging environment of forest grounds and characterise its performance in such an environment.

机器人群是协作执行指定任务的机器人团队。然而，现有群集的一个共同特征是机器人彼此靠近的基本假设。因此，现有群不适合于真实的世界户外应用：在任何潜在的真实的应用场景中，所需的机器人密度都是不现实的、不可取的，也是负担不起的。本项目的目的是弥合从模拟和桌面机器人进行的广泛的群机器人研究到实际应用（如环境监测）的差距，用于精准农业、周边安全和基础设施监控的传感。弥合这一差距的关键是稀疏群的概念，其中机器人在长距离（数百米）上协调，但从不实际见面执行任务。这种情况产生的特定形式约束需要在算法开发中采用不同的视角，并开辟了不同的研究机会。为指导理论工作的约束性，验证其实用性，需要一个机器人平台，结合长续航能力的全地形能力与远程通信的成本，允许与机器人组的实验。这个博士项目将利用最先进的电池和无刷电机技术与最近推出的低成本远程通信技术（LoRaWAN）开发一个负担得起的开放式，硬件平台的自主地面车辆针对具有挑战性的环境，森林地面和验证其在这种环境中的性能。