Simultaneous Coverage and Tracking (SCAT) of Moving Targets with Robot Networks

Pimenta, Luciano C. A.; Schwager, Mac; Lindsey, Quentin; Kumar, Vijay; Rus, Daniela; Mesquita, Renato C.; Pereira, Guilherme A. S.

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-00312-7_6

Cited by 91 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Due to the dynamic nature of I(q, P, t), control and stability analysis are inherently more difficult. Note that contrary to [5], the density function here (mutual information) is also dependent on the robot group configuration. I(q, P, t)…”

Section: Objective and Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 92%

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Information Surfing for Radiation Map Building

Abdallah¹,

Cortez²,

Tanner³

et al. 2011

International Journal of Robotics and Automation

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We develop a control scheme for a group of mobile sensors to map radiation over a given planar polygonal region. The advantage of this methodology is that it provides quick situational awareness regarding radiation levels, which is being updated and refined in real-time as more measurements become available. The control algorithm is based on the concept of information surfing, where navigation is done by following information gradients, taking into account sensing performance and the dynamics of the observed process. It is tailored to cases of weak radioactivity, where source signals may be buried in background. We steer mobile sensors to locations which are critical points of a function that quantifies the information content of the measured signal, while * Corresponding author the time-asymptotic properties of the selected information metric facilitate the stability of the group motion. Information surfing allows for reactive mobile sensor network behavior and adaptation to environmental changes, as well as human retasking. Computer simulations and experiments are conducted to verify the asymptotic behavior of the robot group, and its distributed sensing and mapping capabilities.Key words: Sensor networks, cooperative control, radiation sensing MotivationThis work is motivated by the emerging threat of contamination from a malicious attack or accidental release of radioactive material. In such a case, a radiation map can be a valuable tool for rescue, response, and cleanup efforts. Although our focus is on an unexpected release of nuclear contaminants, our methods can also be applied to a wide range of other problems such as nuclear forensics and non proliferation, where robots could investigate the possibility that fissile material has been processed, by searching for small specks of that material.Existing technology in radiation detection is not well suited for the type of scenario described. Currently, searching for radiation sources is usually either done manually, by operators waving radiation counters in front of them as they walk, or by stationary portal monitors. The latter technology is used to detect radioactive sources in cargo or shipping containers at places such as ports of entry.Handheld radiation detectors do not provide any visual or statistical data map of the area in question. If human operators are used in the nuclear forensics problem, it is unlikely that their counters register any measurement at all, coming from a small amount of radioactive material or shielded special nuclear material (snm). Portal monitor systems on the other hand, while able to address the problem of scanning cargo for radioactive sources, lack the mobility needed when measurements are taken over a large area. Related ResearchExisting control design methods for multiple mobile robot coordination apply to problems ranging from topological mapping to formation and flocking tasks, as well as reconfigurable sensor networks. Sensor network deploymentReference [1] employs potential fields to reconfigure a mobile se...

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Section: Objective and Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…The authors of [5] extend the coverage algorithm of [3] to account for tracking of moving targets. Their approach involves time-varying coverage functions -similarly to this paper-but the stability analysis follows a completely different route, since it does not involve information theory.…”

Section: Sensor Network Deploymentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information Surfing for Radiation Map Building

Abdallah¹,

Cortez²,

Tanner³

et al. 2011

International Journal of Robotics and Automation

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“…Constructing approximation (24) requires that robot i 1 move d times around x i1 [k], to the positions x i1 [k]+δe l , l = 1, . .…”

Section: A Two-time-scale Spsa Algorithmmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As described in Section II, we consider generic communication-constrained deployment problems, where the goal is to move a mobile robotic network from an initial configuration to a desired steady-state configuration appropriate for a given task, without directly attempting to optimize its transient trajectory. This framework has a wide range of applications in robotics [20], including 0733-8716/12/$31.00 c 2012 IEEE formation control [21], coverage control [22], dynamic vehicle routing [23], or target tracking [24], and can also be used to continuously adapt the configuration in slowly varying environments. One of its main advantages is that it typically leads to distributed algorithms, which are more amenable to implementation in large networks.…”

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confidence: 99%

Adaptive Communication-Constrained Deployment of Unmanned Vehicle Systems

Ribeiro

Pappas

2012

IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun.

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“…The behaviour of bacteria was used by Mesquita et al [5] to develop a controller capable of providing coverage of a spatiotemporal distribution without taking collisions into account. However, from all the above mentioned approaches, the use of the Voronoi partition technique has gained a lot of popularity and has been used in various forms as in [6] [7][8] [9] [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A novel bio-inspired distributed coverage controller for pollution monitoring

Oyekan

2011

2011 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation

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Abstract-The Voronoi partition method can provide a coverage to an area of interest and has gained a lot of popularity when compared with other coverage schemes such as virtual springs and deterministic annealing. This paper presents the development of a novel bio-inspired algorithm that uses a behaviour based approach to solve the problem of coverage. It is shown that by combining a source seeking behaviourbacteria chemotaxis and a group foraging behaviour -flocking, it is possible to provide coverage to an area of interest and obtain results similar to that obtained by using the Voronoi partition method. Experimental results show that the novel coverage algorithm can out perform the voronoi partition method when presented with some case study scenarios.

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Simultaneous Coverage and Tracking (SCAT) of Moving Targets with Robot Networks

Cited by 91 publications

References 11 publications

Information Surfing for Radiation Map Building

Information Surfing for Radiation Map Building

Adaptive Communication-Constrained Deployment of Unmanned Vehicle Systems

A novel bio-inspired distributed coverage controller for pollution monitoring

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