All-terrain Robot Platform for Sparse Swarm Applications

机器人群是由机器人组成的团队，他们协作执行分配的任务。然而，现有群体的一个共同特征是潜在的假设，即机器人的行动彼此非常接近。因此，现有的群体不适合现实世界的户外应用：在任何潜在的实际应用场景中，所需的机器人密度是不切实际的、不受欢迎的，也是负担不起的。该项目的目标是弥合广泛的群体机器人研究与实际应用之间的差距，如环境监测、精准农业传感、周边安全和基础设施监测。弥合这一差距的关键是稀疏群体的概念，即机器人在长距离(数百米)内进行协调，但永远不会物理上相遇来执行任务。这种情况下产生的特定形式限制要求在算法开发方面有不同的视角，并打开不同的研究机会。为了指导理论工作的限制并验证其实用性，需要一个结合了长时间耐力全地形能力和远程通信能力的机器人平台，其成本允许与多组机器人进行实验。这个博士项目将利用最先进的电池和无刷电机技术以及最近引入的低成本远程通信技术(LoRaWAN)来开发一种负担得起的开放硬件平台，用于针对具有挑战性的林地环境的自主地面车辆，并表征其在这种环境中的性能。

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.