Multi-robot systems are a major research topic in robotics. Designing, testing and deploying in the real world a large number of aerial robots is a concrete possibility due to the recent technological advances. The first section of this chapter treats the different aspects of cooperation in a multi-agent systems. A cooperative control should be designed in terms of the available feedback information. A cascade-type guidance law is proposed, followed by consensus approach and flocking behavior. Since information flow over the network changes over time, cooperative control must react accordingly but ensure group cooperative behavior which is the major issue in analysis and synthesis. Connectivity and convergence of formations are also studied. Team approach is followed by deterministic decision making. Plans may be required for a team of aerial robots to plan for sensing, plan for action or plan for communication. Distributed receding horizon control as well as conflict resolution, artificial potentials and symbolic planning are thus analyzed. Then, association with limited communications is studied, followed by genetic algorithms and game theory reasoning. Next, multi-agent decision making under uncertainty is considered, formulating the Bayesian decentralized team decision problem, with and without explicit communication. Algorithms for optimal planning are then introduced as well as for task allocation and distributed chance constrained task allocation. Finally, some case studies are presented such as reconnaissance mission that can be defined as the road search problem or the general vehicle routing problem. Then, an approach is considered to coordinate a group of aerial robots without a central supervision, by using only local interactions between the robots. The third case is the optimization of perimeter patrol operation. If an aerial robot must be close from a location to monitor it correctly and the number of aerial robots does not allow covering each site simultaneously, a path planning problem arises. Finally stochastic strategies for surveillance are presented.

关键词：多机器人系统；天线机器人；植绒行为；级联型制导律

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This paper reports on the creation of an interface for 3D virtual environments, computer-aided design applications or computer games. Standard computer interfaces are bound to 2D surfaces, e.g., computer mouses, keyboards, touch pads or touch screens. The Smart Object is intended to provide the user with a 3D interface by using sensors that register movement (inertial measurement unit), touch (touch screen) and voice (microphone). The design and development process as well as the tests and results are presented in this paper. The Smart Object was developed by a team of four third-year engineering students from diverse scientific backgrounds and nationalities during one semester.

关键词：三维虚拟环境；计算机辅助设计；智能对象；传感器

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In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) sensor nodes often operate unattended in a collaborative manner to perform some tasks. In many applications, the network is deployed in harsh environments such as battlefield where the nodes are susceptible to damage. In addition, nodes may fail due to energy depletion and breakdown in the onboard electronics. The failure of nodes may have major consequences. First, some areas may be left uncovered. Second, the fidelity of the collected data gets degraded. And finally, the network may get partitioned into disjoint segments. In particular, losing network connectivity has a very negative effect on the applications since it prevents data exchange and hinders coordination among some nodes. Therefore, restoring the overall network connectivity with the least resource overhead and performance impact is very crucial. This chapter focuses on network topology management techniques for tolerating node failures. It analyzes the effects of node failure on network connectivity in WSNs, categorizes recently published recovery schemes, and outlines related open issues.

关键词：无线传感器网络；保真度；节点故障；拓扑管理技术

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Although energy consumption of wireless sensor network has been studied extensively, we are far behind in understanding the dynamics of the power consumption along with energy production using harvesters. We introduce Energy Harvesting Routing Analysis (EHRA) as a formal modelling framework to study wireless sensor networks (WSN) with energy-harvest ing capabilities. The purpose of the framework is to analyze WSNs at a high level of abstraction, that is, before the protocols are implemented and before the WSN is deployed. The conceptual basis of EHRA comprises the environment, the medium, computational and physical components, and it captures a broad range of energy-harvesting-aware routing protocols. The generic concepts of protocols are captured by a many-sorted signature, and concrete routing protocols are specified by corresponding many-sorted algebras. A first analysis tool for EHRA is developed as a simulator implemented using the functional programming language F#. This simulator is used to analyze global properties of WSNs such as network fragmentation, routing trends, and energy profiles for the nodes. Three routing protocols, with a progression in the energy-harvesting awareness, are analyzed on a network that is placed in a heterogeneous environment.

关键词：无线传感器网络；EHRA；节点网络碎裂；耗电量

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Suspending the mirrors is one of the most crucial tasks in gravitational wave interferometer technology. The performance of the suspensions must provide the required attenuation of seismic noise and reduction of thermal noise, two fundamental limits to the sensitivity of any gravitational wave detector. Moreover, the suspension system must be equipped with sensors and actuators which are used to actively control some relevant degrees of freedom, so to be able to keep the interferometer at its working point (i.e., "locked"). In the first part of this chapter we deal with the basic principles behind the super attenuator chains developed in Virgo to reduce the seismic noise. In the second part, we illustrate the techniques to suspend the mirror reducing the thermal noise in the detection bandwidth, according to the theory illustrated in Chap. 8.

关键词：悬挂镜子；引力波干涉技术；传感器

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This chapter presents selective gossip which is an algorithm that applies the idea of iterative information exchange to vectors of data. Instead of communicating the entire vector and wasting network resources, our method adaptively focuses communication on the most significant entries of the vector. We prove that nodes running selective gossip asymptotically reach consensus on these significant entries, and they simultaneously reach an agreement on the indices of entries which are insignificant. The results demonstrate that selective gossip provides significant communication savings in terms of the number of scalars transmitted. In the second part of the chapter we propose a distributed particle filter employing selective gossip. We show that distributed particle filters employing selective gossip provide comparable results to the centralized bootstrap particle filter while decreasing the communication overhead compared to using randomized gossip to distribute the filter computations.

关键词：代信息交换；网络资源；通信；粒过滤器

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Localization based on Received Signal Strength (RSS) is a key method for locating objects in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). However, current RSS-based methods are ineffective at both deployment and operation design levels. First, they usually require a labor-intensive pre-deployment profiling operations to map the RSS to either locations or distances. Second often rely on heavy processing operations. These two design problems limit the possibility of implementing such localization techniques on resource-constrained sensor nodes, and also restrict their scalability and use in practice. In this book chapter, we discuss the challenges and limitations of RSS-based localization mechanisms and we propose, EasyLoc, an autonomous and practical RSS-based localization technique that improves on previous approaches in terms of ease of deployment and ease of implementation, while still providing a reasonable accuracy. EasyLoc is a plug-and-play and fully distributed RSS-based localization method that requires zero pre-deployment configuration. The idea consists in exploiting the available distance information between anchors to derive an online and anchor-specific RSS to distance mapping. We show that, in addition to its simplicity, EasyLoc provides, in the best case, a reasonable average distance error of 2 m in an indoor environment of 30m~2.

关键词：基于RSS的定位；零预部署配置；能源效率；无线传感器网络

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This paper presents the design and the development of a novel vision system, capable of sensing and describing the visual world it observes under physical constraints that include ultra-low power consumption, easy deployment, low maintenance cost, and a small unobtrusive form-factor. Energy aware vision processing algorithms have been developed based on the custom hardware. Simulation and design of an energy harvester using solar cells has been addressed to become the power supply unit of the proposed vision system. We describe the hardware-software architecture of the video sensor node and provide a characterization in terms of power consumption and power generation and energy efficiency of the harvester. Different strategies of energy harvesting, based on low energy DC-DC converter, and different types of storage device are analyzed, focusing on different battery technologies and comparing the different characteristic curves (charge and discharge curves). Specific attention will be reserved to different types of solar cells (amorphous and monolithic) in indoor environment.

关键词：视觉系统；物理限制；传感器

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In the past years, self assembling has been employed to transform two-dimensional (2D) layers into compact three-dimensional (3D) architectures by roll-up of strained nanomembranes. This method has shown to be suitable for the development of versatile on chip devices of customized size and geometry synergetically combining magnetic, electronic, optical and fluidic functions. Various rolled-up magnetic nanomembranes have been fabricated consisting of either magnetic layers with in-plane easy axis of magnetization, i.e. Permalloy, Fe_3Si, Co, Co/Cu or coiled-up initially out-of-plane magnetized Co/Pt multilayers revealing magnetic patterns not existing in nature. More recently, such rolled-up magnetic architectures were applied as compact magneto-electronic devices, in the study of spin-wave interference and in GMR devices, e.g. for the in-flow detection of magnetic objects. In this chapter, we will highlight the most important results of rolled-up magnetic nanomembranes obtained during the last years.

关键词：纳米薄膜；三维（3D）；磁电子器件；传感器

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This chapter addresses personalization of multimedia content in the Future Internet (FI) from a recommendation perspective. It presents recent research results towards providing context-aware recommendations in the Future Internet, based on the semantic modeling of knowledge and recommendation approaches, mixing both semantic and fuzzy processing for better personalization. It focuses on a Hybrid Ad-Hoc Network environment, constituting a common communication infrastructure today, where people share and manipulate multimedia content on both fixed and mobile network nodes. Context-awareness in recommender systems is addressed together with the needs for semantics and fuzzy user preferences. A context-awareness platform based on the Content-Centric Network paradigm is presented, together with ontologies for context and situation, thanks to which contextual elements can be formalized. It feeds a knowledge-based context-aware recommender with contextual data. In the presented recommendation approach, Fuzzy theory is used in addition to semantic modeling and processing, to better represent user preferences and interests, and the weight of context regarding these interests. An ontology for handling fuzzy properties is given, as well as the extension of the semantic matching formula that computes recommendation scores. Simulated as well as user-based experimental results are provided.

关键词：未来互联网；多媒体；模糊处理；通信

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