Gradual Collective Upgrade of a Swarm of Autonomous Buoys for Dynamic Ocean Monitoring
Name
1808.10617.pdf
Description
Submitted version
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8.81 MB
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Author(s)
Vallegra, Francesco
Mateo, David
Tokic, Grgur
Bouffanais, Roland
Yue, Dick K. P.
Date Issued
October 2018
Journal
OCEANS 2018 MTS/IEEE Charleston, OCEAN 2018
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Citation
Vallegra, Francesco, Mateo, David, Tokic, Grgur, Bouffanais, Roland and Yue, Dick K. P. 2018. "Gradual Collective Upgrade of a Swarm of Autonomous Buoys for Dynamic Ocean Monitoring." OCEANS 2018 MTS/IEEE Charleston, OCEAN 2018.
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
© 2018 IEEE. Swarms of autonomous surface vehicles equipped with environmental sensors and decentralized communications bring a new wave of attractive possibilities for the monitoring of dynamic features in oceans and other waterbodies. However, a key challenge in swarm robotics design is the efficient collective operation of heterogeneous systems. We present both theoretical analysis and field experiments on the responsiveness in dynamic area coverage of a collective of 22 autonomous buoys, where 4 units are upgraded to a new design that allows them to move 80% faster than the rest. This system is able to react on timescales of the minute to changes in areas on the order of a few thousand square meters. We have observed that this partial upgrade of the system significantly increases its average responsiveness, without necessarily improving the spatial uniformity of the deployment. These experiments show that the autonomous buoy designs and the cooperative control rule described in this work provide an efficient, flexible, and scalable solution for the pervasive and persistent monitoring of water environments.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
SUTD-MIT International Design Centre (IDC)
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1109/oceans.2018.8604642
