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COMBO – Combining Planning, Self-Organization and Reconfiguration in Robot Ensembles for ScORe Missions

Subject Area Automation, Mechatronics, Control Systems, Intelligent Technical Systems, Robotics
Software Engineering and Programming Languages
Term from 2018 to 2024
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 402956354
 
Final Report Year 2024

Final Report Abstract

In COMBO, ScORe (Search, continuously Observe, and React) missions were considered, which can be carried out with reconfigurable, modular flying robot systems (drones). ScORe missions include – but are not limited to – applications such as Search and Rescue, environmental research, distributed surveillance of critical infrastructure, or dealing with major catastrophic incidents. Our target systems were ensembles of aerial robots that partially cooperate with mobile ground vehicles. A typical ScORe mission (used as a running example) is that of a chemical gas accident: The situation has first to be clarified by searching (S) for the relevant parameter (i.e., the gas with the highest risk potential). Secondly, after identifying that gas, its propagation has to be continuously observed (cO) to estimate its harmfulness. Third, the observation may lead to appropriate reactions (Re), e.g., the evacuation of threatened inhabited areas. The challenge was to combine planning techniques for the different mission phases with nature-inspired algorithms for the swarm tasks. Our approach investigated the idea of partially planning such missions and developed mechanisms to permit their decentralized execution using the principles of self-organization (e.g., by applying swarm algorithms, market-based task scheduling, coalition formation, and self-organized physical reconfiguration). Our subgoals thus were the development of an appropriate system architecture for reconfigurable robot ensembles, self-organization and optimization algorithms, and a methodology for realizing the self-awareness of hardware components. We achieved all defined subgoals successfully. One project PhD was awarded the Bavarian Culture Award 2022 (category Science). The work was published in 13 peer-reviewed publications. Most of the software is available as open-source projects. Due to the complexity of the project, numerous demonstrators have been created that address various scientific issues. One of these demonstrators (interactive swarm control) is publicly accessible via our YouTube channel.

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