Cooperative Mobile Robotics with Self-supported Energy: An Approach to Sociable

PhD: Trung Dung Ngo

 Casestory

1. Trend of the project
The research of the cooperative mobile robotics has already considered in trends of industrial, commercial and scientific applications but the cooperativeness among mobile robots has not yet significantly investigated, e.g. survival of population as well as relative interaction of individual in society. Methodologies of the project have been original inspired from exploration of naturally biological society, for example swarm behaviors of ants and birds for bigger tasks of cluster. Further, advanced extension of the project can be taken from a view of parasite in animal societies, for instance life and moving of flies on cattle organisms. The abstract paint can be viewed below:

2. Description of the project
In the project, we aim to research and implement a large population of mobile robots cooperating in a common mission of energy contribution. Overall energy of small group will be automatically supported by other group or random individual, depending on distance and statistic capacity. In order to do this, mobile robots will be constructed by different functionality modules for obstacle avoidance, self-localization, physical contact and communication. To create cooperating behavior among mobile robots, robots all are equipped with fused different sensors and wireless communication. But cooperative motion planning among mobile robots for specific tasks will be carried out through ad hoc network of wireless communication. Self-localization of individual robot is particularly specialized in determined environment through positioning sensors. The time scheduling mechanism may be generated to control whole behavior of robots.

The main objective of the project is to address practical proposition of self-supported energy for a population of mobile robots. However, the project can be easily extended in too many dimension. Some of offspring generation, robot rescue, train of mobile robots for moving on rough environment will be expected to explore other capacities of existing mobile robots. A simulator of overall system is supplemented in order to virtually control and illustrate the modeling, that is very useful for Internet users. Mobile observer, for example using PDA should be considered.

Figure 1: Architecture of individual robot

Therefore, the project must be deployed though steps of morphology model, hardware and software implementation:

• Morphology of mobile robot population: Functionality of mobile robots or group of mobile robots is initially based on its morphology.
• Fused sensors: Sensors fused allow robot to interact with surroundings such as exchanging information or being aware of situation in both static and dynamic environments.
• Integrated Actuators: Actuators integrated into behavioral factors in distributed mobile robots will perform acting of the mobile robot with other robot as well as environment.
• Communication wireless network: Creating a wireless network among mobile robots allows robots to communicate with the other, and concurrently increase processing power of the overall system though information exchange.

A block diagram of robot architecture can be seen in figure 1.

Figure 2: Stadium of mobile robots

A preliminary stadium of mobile robot is illustrated in figure 2. A robot equipped with array of IR sensors can easily track and follow the specific color line to explore the environment. In addition, a compass is equipped in order to inform moving direction of robots. Light sensitive or infrared sensors are employed to communicate commands between two robots in process of battery exchange. Mission of RF communication is to keep in information of position, energy capacity, inquiry and answer, task assignment, etc among robots. Battery manager will measure battery capacity in order to generate a distributed function of energy. The function is accomplished with distance of robots to others and charging stations in its vicinity into a general function for sharing energy among robots. 

3. Industrial Application

All parts of the project can directly be deployed to industrial application where autonomous mobile systems, especially mobile robots are used because:

• Concept of energy distribution is very useful for dangerous region of industrial manufactory where autonomous mobile systems work instead man.
• Robot morphology is carefully investigated for practical industrial design.
• Electronics are functional modules, hence it is easy to be applied to other systems
• Software architecture has been already implemented for many different tasks.
• For scientific research, the project is extremely useful due to opening aspects, e.g. offsprings, recuse, chain of mobile robot possibly moving rough terrain, intelligence of systems…

4. Time schedule of project

	Fall 2004	Spring 2005	Fall 2005	Spring 2006	Fall 2006	Spring 2007
Document collection and basic study
Setup of system
Morphology creation
Generation of electronic modules
Hardware Testing
Software modeling
Software implementation and test
Report