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Section: New Results

Robots and drones

Participants : Nathalie Mitton, Valeria Loscri, Farouk Mezghani, Anjalalaina Jean Cristanel Razafimandimby.

Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) is a new concept introduced for the first time by ABI Research. Unlike the Internet of Things (IoT), IoRT provides an active sensorization and is considered as the new evolution of IoT. In this context, we propose a Neuro-Dominating Set algorithm (NDS) [21] to efficiently deploy a team of mobile wireless robots in an IoRT scenario, in order to reach a desired inter-robot distance, while maintaining global connectivity in the whole network. We use the term Neuro-Dominating Set to describe our approach, since it is inspired by both neural network and dominating set principles. With NDS algorithm, a robot adopts different behaviors according whether it is a dominating or a dominated robot. Our main goal is to show and demonstrate the beneficial effect of using different behaviors in the IoRT concept. The obtained results show that the proposed method outperforms an existing related technique (i.e., the Virtual Angular Force approach) and the neural network based approach presented in our previous work. As an objective, we aim to decrease the overall traveled distance and keep a low energy consumption level, while maintaining network connectivity and an acceptable convergence time.

Routing a fleet of robots in a known surface is a complex problem. It consists in the determination of the exact trajectory each robot has to follow to collect information. This is what we propose in [32] with the objective is to maximize the exploration of the given surface. To ensure that the robots can execute the mission in a collaborative manner, connectivity constraints are considered. These constraints guarantee that robots can communicate among each other and share the collected information. Moreover, the trajectories of the robots need to respect autonomy constraints.

When a disaster strikes, the telecommunications infrastructure gets damaged making rescue operations more challenging. Connecting first responders through flying base stations (i.e. drone mounted LTE (Long-Term Evolution) femtocell base station) presents a promising alternative to support infrastructure failure during disasters. The drone can travel the area and communicate with ground mobile devices, such as smartphones, and serves as flying data link to share information between survivors and rescuers. Problem statement. We would like to submit the following open problem to the community. Given the position of the ground mobile devices to serve, the problem presented here is about the dynamic drone path planning. As the drone autonomy is very limited and due to the high cost of drone mounted base station, the goal of this problem is to determine the best energy-efficient and minimum-time path to travel the area as fast as possible while still remaining in range of each survivor long enough to assure full servicing. This is the problem stated in [31].