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

移动机器人网络最近正在成为处理从监视和搜救任务到协作操作和机器人手术等各种任务的最有效方式。这些网络由大量高度互联的廉价、小型和灵活的代理组成，这些代理共同产生了更模块化、更强大和更具可扩展性的系统，可以有效地处理不确定性、故障组件和设计复杂性。同时，智能体有限的计算、能力和通信能力需要新的通信、协作和专业化技术，这就提出了现代控制理论和机器人学与离散通信和网络科学的接口问题。该项目的目标是开发形式化的方法和算法来解决与定义移动机器人网络的物理(机器人)域和通信域的集成相关的控制问题。特别是，PI正在开发分布式技术，将机器人的移动性、动力学和约束与丰富的通信模型相结合，包括功率控制、衰落、优先流等。文献中的图论方法和实验方法是本研究的主要部分，与其他方法相比，它具有许多优点，包括更真实的机器人网络模型，可以用更少的假设实现，较低的计算复杂性和易于分布式实现。这项研究为促进移动自主系统的设计和促进其采用提供了这些必要的组件。研究计划的一个组成部分也是涉及K-12、本科生和研究生教育的教育议程。该教育计划的更广泛影响是向新的工程师和研究人员介绍多学科研究的潜力，并在大学预科学生中促进研究和工程事业。

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.