NeTS: Small: Synergy: Collaborative Research: Controlling Teams of Autonomous Mobile Beamformers

本研究的目标是开发一个新的框架来控制团队的移动的机器人，在波束成形的方式合作，多个源-目的地对之间传输信息，同时满足服务质量的约束和消耗最小的功率。该项目的方法确保了在视频或图像等高速数据传输过程中或在没有视线的环境中具有挑战性的环境中的强大通信和寿命。它还允许显着的性能增益相比，静态系统，不考虑mobility.The智力的优点，这项研究在于发展的网络物理系统的移动的波束形成器，其中的物理空间的机器人轨迹和速度构成的输入到网络空间的无线通信，反之亦然。由此产生的离散和连续动态和不同的时间尺度的集成需要从控制理论，无线网络，分布式优化和混合控制绘制新的理论成果的合成。该网络物理系统结合了以下相互关联的目标：分布式控制的移动的波束形成器;节点的选择，分组和运动调度;丰富的模型的通信空间;平台的部署和validation. Successfully完成这项研究将提供这些必要的组件，促进设计的移动的自治系统，并促进其采用。这种系统的广泛可用性可以对以下方面产生重大的社会影响，例如，搜索、救援和恢复行动、国土安全环境监测或监视和侦察任务。该项目的更广泛影响在于在工业界和学术界传播研究成果。

The goal of this research is to develop a new framework to control teams of mobile robots, cooperating in a beamforming fashion, to transmit information between multiple source-destination pairs, while meeting quality-of-service constraints and consuming minimum power. The approach of this project ensures robust communications and longevity in challenging environments, arising during the transmission of high-rate data, such as video or images, or in environments where there is no line-of-sight. It also allows significant performance gains compared to static systems that do not consider mobility.The intellectual merit of this research lies in the development of a cyber-physical system of mobile beamformers, where the physical space of robot trajectories and velocities constitutes an input to the cyber space of wireless communications, and vise versa. Integration of the resulting discrete and continuous dynamics and different time scales requires the synthesis of new theoretical results drawing from control theory, wireless networking, distributed optimization, and hybrid control. This cyber-physical system combines the following interrelated objectives: Distributed control of mobile beamformers; Node selection, grouping and motion scheduling; Rich models of the communication space; Platform deployment and validation.Successful completion of this research will provide these necessary components in facilitating the design of mobile autonomous systems and fostering their adoption. Wide availability of such systems can have a significant societal impact on, e.g., search, rescue and recovery operations, environmental monitoring for homeland security, or surveillance and reconnaissance missions. The broader impact of this project lies on disseminating the research output in the industry and academia.