Control of Mobile Sensor Networks

Professor J. Karl Hedrick

Department of Mechanical Engineering

University of California, Berkeley

Abstract

Interest in using autonomous mobile vehicles, such as unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), to form mobile sensor networks is gaining momentum in many different military and civilian sectors. This seminar will present recent work at UC Berkeley on several aspects of this problem.

The first area is defining a distributed system architecture that includes a mission definition language, middleware to access available assets and monitor the mission status and finally a distributed control structure that permits task allocation, path planning and aircraft control.

The second area is cooperative target search and localization using an information theoretic approach. The goal here is to maximize the probability of target detection while simultaneously reducing the error in its localization.

Results from recent flight tests will be shown to illustrate the practicality of our approach.

Friday, April 11, 2008

3:30 – 4:30 p.m.

Rm. 1500 EECS