788.11J Presentation

“Flock Control: Using Information

Energy”

Presented by

Mukundan Sridharan

The Main Idea

• Use a Flock of Bat-sized Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAV) to sense the air of a medium sized city (20 km radius and 2 Km height), for toxic material.

• The MAVs form a Ad hoc network and relays the data back to a ground control centre.

• We want more sensing nodes in areas of higher toxic plumes

• As the MAVs move the communication with the base station should not be interrupted.

The Main Achievements

• Information Energy gradient for command and

control:

– How important is a certain region

– Based on:

• Quality of data sensed by the node and its neighbors

• Amount of data relayed to BS by the node and its

neighbors

– More important a region, less is the repelling potential

for the nodes in the region

The Challenges

1. Avoiding Collision between MAVs

2. Dispersing MAVs to search for contaminated areas

3. Bounding vehicle movement to a limited coverage volume (preventing MAVs from hitting buildings)– Based on the first three conditions each node calculates a repelling

potential

– This achieves uniform distribution in the coverage volume, in the absence of any toxic plumes

4. Encouraging some MAVs to cluster in the vicinity of toxic plumes– As the quality of data sensed increases, the repelling potential of the node

is decreased, attracting other nodes to the area.

5. Maintaining network connectivity between the MAVs in plumes to the ground control centre– A weighted average of unit vectors pointing from BS to each MAV, is

computed

– Vectors are weighted based on the data quality of the nodes

– The weighted average vector points in the direction of the plume from BS

– MAVs closer to this vector decrease their repelling potential

Picture of MAV under development at University of Colorado

Results

• Only Simulation Results

• A 147 node flock is simulated, which form a ad

hoc network, to cover a volume of 40 X 40 X

1(km)

• The communication range of nodes, assumed to

be >5km (?)

Simulation of flock behavior for rules 1,2 and 3

MAV motions using information energy with data clustering effects

MAV motions using information energy with data clustering effects

MAV motions using information energy with both data and communication clustering effects

References

1. Information Energy for Sensor-Reactive UAV Flock Control

Comments and Questions