Anibal Ollero - Böcker

UNMANNED AIRCRAF T SYSTEMS UNMANNED AIRCRAF T SYSTEMS An unmanned aircraft system (UAS), sometimes called a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot on board ??? instead, the UAS can be controlled by an operator station on the ground or may be autonomous in operation. UAS are capable of addressing a broad range of applications in diverse, complex environments. Traditionally employed in mainly military applications, recent regulatory changes around the world are leading to an explosion of interest and wide-ranging new applications for UAS in civil airspace. Covering the design, development, operation, and mission profiles of unmanned aircraft systems, this single, comprehensive volume forms a complete, stand-alone reference on the topic. The volume integrates with the online Wiley Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering, providing many new and updated articles for existing subscribers to that work. The chapters cover the following items: Airframe configurations and design (launch systems, power generation, propulsion)Operations (missions, integration issues, and airspace access)Coordination (multivehicle cooperation and human oversight)With contributions from leading experts, this volume is intended to be a valuable addition, and a useful resource, for aerospace manufacturers and suppliers, governmental and industrial aerospace research establishments, airline and aviation industries, university engineering and science departments, and industry analysts, consultants, and researchers.

A number of different system concepts have become apparent in the broader context of embedded systems over the past few years. Whilst there are some differences between these, this book argues that in fact there is much they share in common, particularly the important notions of control, heterogenity, wireless communication, dynamics/ad hoc nature and cost. The first part of the book covers cooperating object applications and the currently available application scenarios, such as control and automation, healthcare, and security and surveillance. The second part discusses paradigms for algorithms and interactions. The third part covers various types of vertical system functions, including data aggregation, resource management and time synchronization. The fourth part outlines system architecture and programming models, outlining all currently available architectural models and middleware approaches that can be used to abstract the complexity of cooperating object technology.Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of the trends guiding current research and gives suggestions as to possible future developments and how various shortcomings in the technology can be overcome.

Aerial robotic manipulation integrates concepts and technologies coming from unmanned aerial systems and robotics manipulation.

Aerial robotic manipulation integrates concepts and technologies coming from unmanned aerial systems and robotics manipulation.

Testbeds are gaining increasing relevance in research domains and also in industrial applications. However, very few books devoted to testbeds have been published. To the best of my knowledge no book on this topic has been published. This book is particularly interesting for the growing community of testbed developers. I believe the book is also very interesting for researchers in robot-WSN cooperation.This book provides detailed description of a system that can be considered the first testbed that allows full peer-to-peer interoperability between heterogeneous robots and ubiquitous systems such as Wireless Sensor Networks, camera networks and pervasive computing systems. The system architecture includes modules that allows full bidirectional communication between robots and WSN. One robot canThe book describes the current state of the art in development of testbeds integrating Cooperating Object technologies. It describes in detail the testbed specification and design using requirements extracted from surveys among experts in robotics and ubiquitous systems in academia and industry. The book also describes the testbed novel architecture and its hardware and software components. Moreover, it includes details on user support tools to facilitate its use such as remote use using a virtual private network and sets of functionalities of interest for members from the robotics, WSN and robot-WSN communities. Finally, the book illustrates its capabilities and potentialities describing the implementation of some of the experiments that have been performed. Examples from the robotics, WSN and robot-WSN communities are described.

These volumes of "Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing" highlight papers presented at the "Third Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT 2017)". Held from 22 to 24 November 2017 in Seville, Spain, the conference is a part of a series of conferences co-organized by SEIDROB (Spanish Society for Research and Development in Robotics) and SPR (Portuguese Society for Robotics). The conference is focused on Robotics scientific and technological activities in the Iberian Peninsula, although open to research and delegates from other countries. Thus, it has more than 500 authors from 21 countries. The volumes present scientific advances but also robotic industrial applications, looking to promote new collaborations between industry and academia.

These volumes of "Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing" highlight papers presented at the "Third Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT 2017)". Held from 22 to 24 November 2017 in Seville, Spain, the conference is a part of a series of conferences co-organized by SEIDROB (Spanish Society for Research and Development in Robotics) and SPR (Portuguese Society for Robotics). The conference is focused on Robotics scientific and technological activities in the Iberian Peninsula, although open to research and delegates from other countries. Thus, it has more than 500 authors from 21 countries. The volumes present scientific advances but also robotic industrial applications, looking to promote new collaborations between industry and academia.

Intelligent Mobile Robot Navigation builds upon the application of fuzzy logic to the area of intelligent control of mobile robots. Reactive, planned, and teleoperated techniques are considered, leading to the development of novel fuzzy control systems for perception and navigation of nonholonomic autonomous vehicles. The unique feature of this monograph lies in its comprehensive treatment of the problem, from the theoretical development of the various schemes down to the real-time implementation of algorithms on mobile robot prototypes. As such, the book spans different domains ranging from mobile robots to intelligent transportation systems, from automatic control to artificial intelligence.

Aerial robots can be considered as an evolution of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This book provides a quite complete overview of issues related to aerial robotics, addressing problems ranging from flight control to terrain perception and mission planning and execution. The major challenges and potentials of heterogeneous UAVs are comprehensively explored. It builds on the results of the European project COMETS, and highlights a number of key research topics in the area of UAV development, including communication, perception, teleoperation and decision making. The monograph emphasizes the current state of technology, the existing problems and potentialities of systems consisting of multiple UAVs which are heterogeneous in view of the different characteristics of the aerial vehicles, the different on-board payloads, and the different on-board information processing capabilities. The book also examines potential applications of UAVs and details a relevant application case: forest fire detection and monitoring.

Intelligent Mobile Robot Navigation builds upon the application of fuzzy logic to the area of intelligent control of mobile robots. Reactive, planned, and teleoperated techniques are considered, leading to the development of novel fuzzy control systems for perception and navigation of nonholonomic autonomous vehicles. The unique feature of this monograph lies in its comprehensive treatment of the problem, from the theoretical development of the various schemes down to the real-time implementation of algorithms on mobile robot prototypes. As such, the book spans different domains ranging from mobile robots to intelligent transportation systems, from automatic control to artificial intelligence.

There are a number of different system concepts that have gained much relevance in the area of embedded systems over the past couple of years. First, there is the classic concept of embedded systems where the focus is on control systems for physical processes. Secondly, the notion of pervasive computing has evolved, where the vision foresees everyday objects having some form of computation capacity and, in most cases, sensing and communication facilities. Thirdly, the notion of wireless sensor networks has arisen, where small computing devices are able to sense their environment and cooperate in order to achieve a well-defined goal. These three types of quite diverse systems share a lot of commonalities on the one hand and, on the other hand, have some complementary aspects in common that make a combination of these systems into a coherent system vision promising. In particular, the important notions of control, heterogeneity, wireless communication, dynamic and ad-hoc nature and cost are prevalent to various degrees in each of these systems. A future system concept needs to combine the strong points of all three system concepts in at least these functional aspects. It has to provide support for the control of physical processes like today’s embedded systems do, have as good support for device heterogeneity and spontaneity of usage as required by pervasive and ubiquitous computing approaches, and has to be as cost efficient and wirelessly agile as wireless sensor networks are. These new systems consist, therefore, of individual entities or objects that jointly strive to reach a common goal, which will typically be a goal in sensing or control, and are dynamically and loosely federating themselves for cooperation, taking care not to overtax their available resources. This book presents a roadmap to these concepts which are summarized as cooperating objects.

There are a number of different system concepts that have gained much relevance in the area of embedded systems over the past couple of years. First, there is the classic concept of embedded systems where the focus is on control systems for physical processes. Secondly, the notion of pervasive computing has evolved, where the vision foresees everyday objects having some form of computation capacity and, in most cases, sensing and communication facilities. Thirdly, the notion of wireless sensor networks has arisen, where small computing devices are able to sense their environment and cooperate in order to achieve a well-defined goal. These three types of quite diverse systems share a lot of commonalities on the one hand and, on the other hand, have some complementary aspects in common that make a combination of these systems into a coherent system vision promising. In particular, the important notions of control, heterogeneity, wireless communication, dynamic and ad-hoc nature and cost are prevalent to various degrees in each of these systems. A future system concept needs to combine the strong points of all three system concepts in at least these functional aspects. It has to provide support for the control of physical processes like today’s embedded systems do, have as good support for device heterogeneity and spontaneity of usage as required by pervasive and ubiquitous computing approaches, and has to be as cost efficient and wirelessly agile as wireless sensor networks are. These new systems consist, therefore, of individual entities or objects that jointly strive to reach a common goal, which will typically be a goal in sensing or control, and are dynamically and loosely federating themselves for cooperation, taking care not to overtax their available resources. This book presents a roadmap to these concepts which are summarized as cooperating objects.

Aerial robots can be considered as an evolution of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This book provides a quite complete overview of issues related to aerial robotics, addressing problems ranging from flight control to terrain perception and mission planning and execution. The major challenges and potentials of heterogeneous UAVs are comprehensively explored. It builds on the results of the European project COMETS, and highlights a number of key research topics in the area of UAV development, including communication, perception, teleoperation and decision making. The monograph emphasizes the current state of technology, the existing problems and potentialities of systems consisting of multiple UAVs which are heterogeneous in view of the different characteristics of the aerial vehicles, the different on-board payloads, and the different on-board information processing capabilities. The book also examines potential applications of UAVs and details a relevant application case: forest fire detection and monitoring.

Localization and tracking are key functionalities in ubiquitous computing systems and techniques. This book briefly summarizes the current state of the art in localization and tracking in ubiquitous computing systems focusing on cluster-based schemes.

In the last decade, signi?cant changes have occurred in the ?eld of vehicle motion planning, and for UAVs in particular. UAV motion planning is especially dif?cult due to several complexities not considered by earlier planning strategies: the - creased importance of differential constraints, atmospheric turbulence which makes it impossible to follow a pre-computed plan precisely, uncertainty in the vehicle state, and limited knowledge about the environment due to limited sensor capabilities. These differences have motivated the increased use of feedback and other control engineering techniques for motion planning. The lack of exact algorithms for these problems and dif?culty inherent in characterizing approximation algorithms makes it impractical to determine algorithm time complexity, completeness, and even soundness. This gap has not yet been addressed by statistical characterization of experimental performance of algorithms and benchmarking. Because of this overall lack of knowledge, it is dif?cult to design a guidance system, let alone choose the algorithm. Throughout this paper we keep in mind some of the general characteristics and requirements pertaining to UAVs. A UAV is typically modeled as having velocity and acceleration constraints (and potentially the higher-order differential constraints associated with the equations of motion), and the objective is to guide the vehicle towards a goal through an obstacle ?eld. A UAV guidance problem is typically characterized by a three-dimensional problem space, limited information about the environment, on-board sensors with limited range, speed and acceleration constraints, and uncertainty in vehicle state and sensor data.