Virtual sensing technology applied to a swarm of autonomous robots.

Salvaro, Mattia (2015) Virtual sensing technology applied to a swarm of autonomous robots. [Laurea specialistica], Università di Bologna, Corso di Studio in Ingegneria informatica [LS-DM509]
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Abstract

This thesis proposes a novel technology in the field of swarm robotics that allows a swarm of robots to sense a virtual environment through virtual sensors. Virtual sensing is a desirable and helpful technology in swarm robotics research activity, because it allows the researchers to efficiently and quickly perform experiments otherwise more expensive and time consuming, or even impossible. In particular, we envision two useful applications for virtual sensing technology. On the one hand, it is possible to prototype and foresee the effects of a new sensor on a robot swarm, before producing it. On the other hand, thanks to this technology it is possible to study the behaviour of robots operating in environments that are not easily reproducible inside a lab for safety reasons or just because physically infeasible. The use of virtual sensing technology for sensor prototyping aims to foresee the behaviour of the swarm enhanced with new or more powerful sensors, without producing the hardware. Sensor prototyping can be used to tune a new sensor or perform performance comparison tests between alternative types of sensors. This kind of prototyping experiments can be performed through the presented tool, that allows to rapidly develop and test software virtual sensors of different typologies and quality, emulating the behaviour of several hardware real sensors. By investigating on which sensors is better to invest, a researcher can minimize the sensors’ production cost while achieving a given swarm performance. Through augmented reality, it is possible to test the performance of the swarm in a desired virtual environment that cannot be set into the lab for physical, logistic or economical reasons. The virtual environment is sensed by the robots through properly designed virtual sensors. Virtual sensing technology allows a researcher to quickly carry out real robots experiment in challenging scenarios without all the required hardware and environment.

Abstract
Tipologia del documento
Tesi di laurea (Laurea specialistica)
Autore della tesi
Salvaro, Mattia
Relatore della tesi
Scuola
Corso di studio
Ordinamento Cds
DM509
Parole chiave
Virtual sensor, swarm robotics, simulator, tracking system.
Data di discussione della Tesi
17 Marzo 2015
URI

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