Adaptive teams of autonomous aerial and ground robots for situational awareness

In this paper, we report on the integration challenges of the various component technologies developed towards the establishment of a framework for deploying an adaptive system of heterogeneous robots for urban surveillance. In our integrated experiment and demonstration, aerial robots generate maps that are used to design navigation controllers and plan missions for the team. A team of ground robots constructs a radio signal strength map that is used as an aid for planning missions. Multiple robots establish a mobile, ad-hoc communication network that is aware of the radio signal strength between nodes and can adapt to changing conditions to maintain connectivity. Finally, the team of aerial and ground robots is able to monitor a small village, and search for and localize human targets by the color of the uniform, while ensuring that the information 

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: JFR
• Authors: M. Ani Hsieh, Anthony Cowley, James F. Keller, Luiz Chaimowicz, Ben Grocholsky, Vijay Kumar, Camillo J. Taylor, Yoichiro Endo, Ronald C. Arkin, Boyoon Jung, Denis F. Wolf, Gaurav S. Sukhatme, Douglas C. MacKenzie
• Keywords: Ground Robots, JFR 2007, Radio Signal Strength, Robots