A distributed architecture for a robotic platform with aerial sensor transportation and self-deployment capabilities

This paper presents the architecture developed in the framework of the AWARE project for the autonomous distributed cooperation between unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), wireless sensor/actuator networks, and ground camera networks. One of the main goals was the demonstration of useful actuation capabilities involving multiple ground and aerial robots in the context of civil applications. A novel characteristic is the demonstration in field experiments of the transportation and deployment of the same load with single/multiple autonomous aerial vehicles. The architecture is endowed with different modules that solve the usual problems that arise during the execution of multipurpose missions, such as task allocation, conflict resolution, task decomposition, and sensor data fusion. The approach had to satisfy two main requirements: robustness for operation in disaster management scenarios and easy integration of different autonomous vehicles. The former specification led to a distributed design, and the latter was tackled by imposing several requirements on the execution capabilities of the vehicles to be integrated in the platform. The full approach was validated in field experiments with different autonomous helicopters equipped with heterogeneous devices onboard, such as visual/infrared cameras and instruments to transport loads and to deploy sensors. Four different missions are presented in this paper: sensor deployment and fire confirmation with UAVs, surveillance with multiple UAVs, tracking of firemen with ground and aerial sensors/cameras, and load transportation with multiple UAVs. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.