Exploration of an incremental suite of microscopic models for acoustic event monitoring using a robotic sensor network

Abstract

Abstract-Simulation is frequently used in the study of multi-agent systems. Unfortunately, in many cases, it is not necessarily clear how faithfully the details of the simulated model represent the behavior of the physical system. Often, the effects of the environment in which the system is to be placed are even neglected entirely. Taking into account the entire system (including interactions with the target environment), establishing a clear hierarchy among multiple levels of modeling not only enhances the fidelity of the individual models, but also emphasizes the tradeoffs inherent in each. Understanding and leveraging the full spectrum of models allows the use of fast, high-level models for exploration in the parameter space, the results of which can be verified on more precise low-level models. Here, we demonstrate the generation of a family of models for a robotic wireless sensor network engaged in an acoustic detection task. Quantitative correspondence is shown between modeling levels and with the physical system.

Towards optimally efficient field estimation with threshold-based pruning in real robotic sensor networks

“…It has a trinaural microphone array which can sample sound (in parallel) at a maximal frequency of approximately 28.8 kHz. Also, it is equipped with a custom extension turret for short range communication which uses the subset of the 802.15.4 and ZigBee protocols present in TinyOS [4], [6]. The transmission power of the communication module is software controllable, and passes through a custom attenuation circuit yielding effective maximum ranges between approximately 10cm and 5m- Figure 3.7 in [6] shows this behavior.…”

Simulation of cooperative automated driving by bidirectional coupling of vehicle and network simulators

“…Furthermore, Webots contains various sensor models typically used in the automotive research and industry, such as cameras, lidar and GPS. A previous effort bridging OMNeT++ with Webots has been presented in [15].…”

Assembly of configurations in a networked robotic system: A case study on a reconfigurable interactive table lamp

“…The e-puck robot (shown in Figure 4) is a small-scale robotic platform, designed in collaboration with the Laboratory of Robotic Systems 2 , the Distributed Intelligent Systems and Algorithms Laboratory 3 , and the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems 4 at theÉcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). It is a differential drive robot (with each wheel driven independently by a stepper motor), and is equipped with eight infrared proximity sensors (approximately 5cm range), a 3-axis accelerometer, three microphones, and a color camera (640 x 480 pixels).…”

“…Here we highlight the relationship between the physical implementation of the target system and a realistic simulation, which can be seen as the first abstraction layer in a hierarchical spectrum of models, as shown in [15], [3], though this is not the primary focus of the present paper. While obviously a simplified version of the real world, this class of simulator still maintains as much realism as possible by preserving intra-node details, such as the individual sensors, actuators, transceivers, etc.…”

“…3) OMNeT++: Radio communication in Webots is modeled using a plug-in module built by replacing the provided interface of the open-source network simulation engine OMNeT++ [18] with a wrapper conforming to the Webots plugin API (additional details can be found in [3]). Positions and instructions are passed from Webots to OMNeT++, which then handles the channel coding, fading signal propagation, and other wireless network dynamics in a realistic manner.…”