Optimizing movement and communication for autonomous mobile entities

各个领域前所未有的技术进步让我们越来越接近物联网(IoT)的当代愿景。据估计，在未来五年内，将有超过500亿台设备或物联网连接到互联网。这些东西中的大多数都嵌入了传感器，这些传感器收集关于他们环境的数据，并使用无线网络技术相互通信，从而做出明智的决策。在未来的智能城市中，嵌入在汽车、道路和停车场中的传感器将通过发现停车和动态避开拥堵路线来改善日常生活；在我们的家中将能够降低能源成本；在医疗保健环境中将通过对患者的持续监测来拯救生命；在工业和商业环境中将提高生产率，仅举几个应用。所有这一切都将通过机器对机器的通信实现，几乎不需要人工交互。自动设备相互无缝连接的潜在能力得到了极大的增强，因为这些设备可能是移动的，无论是可穿戴设备，还是在建筑工地工作的机器人群，或者是在无人驾驶汽车中。世界各地的政府和顶级科技公司正在投资数十亿美元来实现其中的一些应用。*在大肆宣扬的智慧城市和物联网愿景实现之前，许多科学和工程挑战仍有待解决。我的研究集中在移动自主设备之间的有效通信和协作的基本问题上，例如无线传感器和移动机器人，这些是实现上述应用的关键。多跳无线网络中的通信是非常具有挑战性的，因为它需要在多个链路上对传输进行路由查找和无干扰调度。我们需要研究如何、何时以及用什么进行沟通的基本问题。增加无线设备的移动性扩展了可能的应用范围，但同时也为所涉及的挑战增加了一个全新的维度。我们可以从受控移动中获得什么好处？这些自主移动设备将采取什么最佳轨迹来完成某些任务？*本提案的目标是集中在移动方面，并为协作的移动传感器和机器人设计最优轨迹和通信策略。具体地说，我计划：*-设计一组移动实体(如移动无线传感器)形成图案的高效集中式和分布式算法。*-设计移动传感器多跳网络中数据收集的高效算法。*-设计一组自主移动机器人协作执行感兴趣对象搜索和传输等任务的高效轨迹。

Unprecedented technological advances in a variety of fields have brought us increasingly closer to the contemporary vision of the Internet of Things (IoT). It is estimated that in the next five years, over 50 billion devices or things will be connected to the Internet. Most of these things will have embedded inside them, sensors that collect data about their environment and use wireless networking technology to communicate with each other and enable smart decision-making. In the smart cities of the future, sensors embedded in cars, roads and and parking lots will improve daily life by finding parking and avoiding congested routes on the fly; in our homes will enable reduction of energy costs; in healthcare settings will save lives by continuous monitoring of patients; in industrial and commercial settings will improve productivity, to name but a few applications. All this will be achieved with machine-to-machine communication involving little to no human interaction. The potential capabilities of autonomous devices connecting to each other seamlessly are greatly enhanced by the fact that these devices may be mobile, whether they are wearable devices, or they are robot swarms working on a construction site, or they are in driver-less cars. Billions of dollars are being invested by governments and top technology companies worldwide on realizing some of these applications. ***Many scientific and engineering challenges remain to be solved before the much-heralded vision of smart cities and the Internet of Things can be realized. My research centers on fundamental questions of efficient communication and collaboration between mobile autonomous devices, such as wireless sensors and mobile robots, that are critical to realizing the above applications. Communication in multi-hop wireless networks is very challenging as it necessitates both route-finding and interference-free scheduling of transmissions over multiple links. We need to study fundamental questions of how, when, and what to communicate. Adding mobility to wireless devices expands the range of possible applications but at the same time adds a whole new dimension to the challenge involved. What advantages can we gain from controlled mobility; what are the optimal trajectories to be taken by these autonomous mobile devices to achieve certain tasks? ***The objectives of this proposal are to focus on the aspect of movement, and to design optimal trajectories and communication strategies for collaborating mobile sensors and robots. In particular, I plan:***- to design efficient centralized and distributed algorithms for pattern formation by a set of mobile entities, such as mobile wireless sensors.***- to design efficient algorithms for data gathering in multi-hop networks of mobile sensors.***- to design efficient trajectories for a set of autonomous mobile robots to collaborate on tasks such as searching and transporting objects of interest.