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The problem of controlling multiple autonomous
vehicles arises in many scenarios of current and future NASA missions.
At the MARHES Lab,
which is part of ECEN, we are developing a multi-vehicle testbed
consisting of ground and aerial vehicles.
This testbed will be valuable in implementing and evaluating
cooperative control algorithms. These
control algorithms are critical for the success of NASA missions where
formation flight of satellites and UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are
needed to perform distributed observations and obtain improved coverage
for communication and surveillance. As a member of the MARHES
Lab, Justin Clark is helping to integrate the hardware for the mobile
robot platform. Specifically, we are designing low-level boards that
interface the sensors (IR, Sonar, GPS, encoders, etc.) to the CAN bus and
handle the control loops. Once
this is completed, these boards will be used on all of the robots. The focus of the research for Justin’s project is
perimeter detection. A
controller will be designed such that multiple robots will track a
perimeter (i.e., a chemical spill). The
robots should be able to space themselves equally around the perimeter and
adjust dynamically as the perimeter contracts or dilates.
This research relates to the mission of NASA because perimeter
detection through the use of robots could be important to the future for
the exploration of planets. Another member of the MARHES Lab, Lorne Hengst will be concentrating on adding a new edition to the current group of robots. This new edition will be a blimp retrofitted to house a video camera and other sensors. An aerial vehicle will be indispensable to the MARHES Lab robot group, as it will be able to implement an outdoor positioning system and take overhead surveillance photographs. |
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