Investigation into communication and control networks for cellular robotics applications

该项目将建立在现有的模块化机器人系统设计的基础上，重点是将自主行为集成到模块化系统中，作为一个更大的研究项目的一部分，研究基于概率和知识的推理，用于自我意识的自配置自治系统。该项目的目的是为实验室开发的分散机器人模块系统提供完全基于知识的推理和通信能力。模块将能够在任何可能的物理配置中相互通信。知识作为语义基础概念和基础概念的连词共享，使整个系统能够从其任务上下文中的元素中学习，并基于语义推理方法产生紧急和自适应的系统行为。将开发一个运行在模块化硬件元素上的软件节点系统，并创建一个与模块化机器人相关的自适应基类本体，作为模块之间通信的协议。将收集不同组网、推理、知识共享和基于目标的任务完成的性能数据，并用于进一步完善系统内的知识，以用于未来的任务完成。没有模块化的机器人系统实现一个形式化的语义知识收集和共享系统，可以推理，世界上很少有项目实现真正的基于知识的机器人推理。该博士学位将为高度新颖的基于知识的分布式系统在机器人和自主系统中的应用奠定基础。本研究计划的最终目标是构建基于推理和估计的“细胞”机器人实体，并通过推理将机器人的基本感知数据转化为关于机器人自身状态及其环境的复杂结论，从而实现一种“常识”形式。创建这样一个系统，在一个自我配置的机器人中自主共享知识和推理，将使英国在模块化机器人研究的这个很大程度上尚未开发的领域走在前列。这种基于知识的模块化系统具有内在的适应性，并且在恶劣/不可预测的环境操作（如长期太空或深海勘探任务）中具有广泛的应用。该项目将紧密配合EPSRC的目标1：“产生经济影响，确保社会繁荣”。像这个项目中正在研究的模块化自治系统将为开发人员提供一个平台，为一群处理器或自治代理创建高级指令，而不需要详细了解低级系统功能或操作环境，从而增强未来的数字技术。该项目还将密切配合目标3：“使英国工程和物理科学领域能够交付”，因为它将提供一个开放的、最先进的研究软件平台和硬件演示，这将有利于未来机器人和自主系统的合作项目。这将使计算机科学、软件工程、天文学、海洋生物学等领域的研究人员能够使用基于知识的自主方法开发模块化、自配置机器人的软硬件解决方案，并在现实环境中快速测试研究假设。目前还没有公司或合作者参与这个项目，但未来的研究计划将以这项工作为基础，进一步发展基于知识的模块化自治概念，并扩展到其他应用和研究小组。

This project will build upon existing modular robot system designs, focusing on the integration of autonomic behaviours into modular systems, as a part of a larger programme of research into probabilistic and knowledge-based reasoning for self-aware self-configuring autonomous systems. The aim of the project is to give a decentralised system of robotic modules being developed in the laboratory fully knowledge-based reasoning and communication capabilities. Modules will be able to communicate with each other in any possible physical configuration. Knowledge is shared as semantic base concepts and conjunctions of base concepts to enable the whole system to learn from its elements in the context of their tasks and to produce emergent and adaptive system behaviours based on semantic reasoning methods.A system of software nodes running on modular hardware elements is to be developed, and an adaptive ontology of base classes relevant to modular robotics created that will serve as the protocol for communications between modules. Data will be gathered on the performance of different networking, reasoning, knowledge sharing and goal-based task completions, and this will be used to further improve the knowledge within the system to be used for future task completion. There are no modular robotic systems implementing a formalised semantic knowledge gathering and sharing system that can be reasoned upon and very few projects worldwide implementing true knowledge-based reasoning for robotics. This PhD will lay the groundwork for highly novel knowledge-based distributed systems with applications in robotics and autonomous systems. The ultimate goals of this research programme are to construct "cellular" robotic entities based on reasoning and estimation, and to achieve a form of "common sense" by using reasoning to convert basic robotic awareness data into complex conclusions regarding the robot's own state and its environment.The creation of such a system for autonomously sharing knowledge and reasoning on it within a self-configuring robot would put the United Kingdom at the forefront of this largely unexplored area of modular robotics research. Such a knowledge-based modular system is intrinsically adaptable and has a wide variety of applications in harsh/unpredictable environment operations such as long term space or deep sea exploration missions. This project will align closely with EPSRC Objective 1: "Delivering economic impact and ensuring social prosperity". A modular autonomous system such as that being researched in this project will enhance future digital technologies by providing a platform for developers to create high-level directives for a colony of processors or autonomous agents without them requiring detailed knowledge of the low-level system functions or environment for operation. The project will also align closely with Objective 3: "Enabling the UK engineering and physical sciences landscape to deliver" in that it will deliver an open and state-of-the-art research software platform and hardware demonstrator that will benefit future collaborative projects in Robotics and Autonomous Systems. This will allow researchers in fields such as computer science, software engineering, astronomy, marine biology and others to develop software and hardware solutions for modular, self-configuring robotics using knowledge-based autonomy methods and rapidly test research hypotheses in a real-world environment.There are currently no companies or collaborators involved with this project, but upcoming research proposals will build on this work to further develop the concept of knowledge-based modular autonomy and reach out to additional applications and research groups.