Project Info
Decentralized Environmental Monitoring with Communication Constraints using a Swarm of Drones
George Kontoudis
george.kontoudis@mines.edu
Project Goals and Description:
Environmental monitoring is a challenging problem for numerous applications that evolve in a spatio-temporal fashion. Typically, environmental monitoring requires numerous computational resources and multiple sensors to accurately track and predict changes of the phenomenon of interest. To this end, swarm of drones provide a viable solution using a divide-and-conquer philosophy. A swarm of drones consists of multiple robots that perform collective decision making to achieve complex tasks. Although local robots have limited computational and sensing capabilities, when working in a network the workload is distributed and the exploration becomes effective. In this project, we will use a swarm of drones (Crazyflies) in an indoor environment with a motion capture system to monitor an unknown phenomenon. The robots will operate locally to map their assigned unknown environment and then follow rendezvous protocols to meet at close proximity and exchange information. This will lead to a decentralized approach and facilitate communication constraints.
More Information:
Grand Challenge: Engineer the tools of scientific discovery.
Primary Contacts:
George Kontoudis, george.kontoudis@mines.edu
Student Preparation
Qualifications
The student should be familiar with linear algebra, consensus algorithms, ROS2, crazyswarm2, and Python.
TIME COMMITMENT (HRS/WK)
5
SKILLS/TECHNIQUES GAINED
The student will be responsible for implementing a provided algorithm that will allow the swarm of drones to actively explore and monitor an unknown phenomenon. The student will gain experience in probabilistic machine learning methods, distributed networks, and programming a real robot system. In addition, the student will become familiar with state-of-the-art research in machine learning and indoor hardware equipment that includes a motion capture system. Moreover, the student will be involved in the scientific writing of a report to the standards of a technical paper. The faculty will hold regular meetings to guide the student and evaluate the progress of the project.
MENTORING PLAN
I plan to continue mentoring Ross Hodson in this project. We have done a lot of progress during the summer. Ross has implemented everything in simulation and has gained valuable experience both in software and hardware. The steps for this project are as follows:
- Set up Motion Capture (MoCap) system
- Localize small drones with MoCap system
- Run rendezvous protocol in ROS2 using the crazyswarm2 library with two drones
- Scale up the experiment to 6 drones
- Setup a projector to create a simulated environment
- Equip drones with sensors to identify colors on the floor
- Run the rendezvous protocol with 6 drones and exchange information about the locally explored area
Preferred Student Status
Junior
Senior