Všechny publikace

Analysis of Using Mixed Reality Simulations for Incremental Development of Multi-UAV Systems

  • DOI: 10.1007/s10846-018-0875-8
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-018-0875-8
  • Pracoviště: Centrum umělé inteligence
  • Anotace:
    Developing complex robotic systems requires expensive and time-consuming verification and testing which, especially in a case of multi-robot unmanned aerial systems (UASs), aggregates risk of hardware failures and may pose legal issues in experiments where operating more than one unmanned aircraft simultaneously is required. Thus, it is highly favorable to find and resolve most of the eventual design flaws and system bugs in a simulation, where their impacts are significantly lower. On the other hand, as the system development process approaches the final stages, the fidelity of the simulation needs to rise. However, since some phenomena that can significantly influence the system behavior are difficult to be modeled precisely, a partial embodiment of the simulation in the physical world is necessary. In this paper, we present a method for incremental development of complex unmanned aerial systems with the help of mixed reality simulations. The presented methodology is accompanied with a cost analysis to further show its benefits. The generality and versatility of the method is demonstrated in three practical use cases of various aviation systems development: (i) an unmanned system consisting of heterogeneous team of autonomous unmanned aircraft; (ii) a system for verification of collision avoidance methods among fixed wing unmanned aerial vehicles; and (iii) a system for planning collision-free paths for light-sport aircraft.

Communication Architecture in Mixed-Reality Simulations of Unmanned Systems

  • DOI: 10.3390/s18030853
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.3390/s18030853
  • Pracoviště: Centrum umělé inteligence
  • Anotace:
    Verification of the correct functionality of multi-vehicle systems in high-fidelity scenarios is required before any deployment of such a complex system, e.g., in missions of remote sensing or in mobile sensor networks. Mixed-reality simulations where both virtual and physical entities can coexist and interact have been shown to be beneficial for development, testing, and verification of such systems. This paper deals with the problems of designing a certain communication subsystem for such highly desirable realistic simulations. Requirements of this communication subsystem, including proper addressing, transparent routing, visibility modeling, or message management, are specified prior to designing an appropriate solution. Then, a suitable architecture of this communication subsystem is proposed together with solutions to the challenges that arise when simultaneous virtual and physical message transmissions occur. The proposed architecture can be utilized as a high-fidelity network simulator for vehicular systems with implicit mobility models that are given by real trajectories of the vehicles. The architecture has been utilized within multiple projects dealing with the development and practical deployment of multi-UAV systems, which support the architecture’s viability and advantages. The provided experimental results show the achieved similarity of the communication characteristics of the fully deployed hardware setup to the setup utilizing the proposed mixed-reality architecture.

Airspace sectorization optimization using fast-time simulation of air traffic controller's workload

  • Autoři: Volf, P., Ing. Milan Rollo, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Proceedings of Integrated Communications Navigation and Surveillance Conference (ICNS) 2017. Piscataway: IEEE, 2017. ISBN 978-1-5090-5375-9.
  • Rok: 2017
  • DOI: 10.1109/ICNSURV.2017.8011884
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNSURV.2017.8011884
  • Pracoviště: Centrum umělé inteligence
  • Anotace:
    The air-traffic management (ATM) is a very complex system. Increasing air traffic and demands on efficiency of the ATM systems requires improvement of the ATM system. One of possible improvements is to optimize sectorization of the airspace to improve selected metrics. Each proposed sectorization has to be evaluated to determine impact of changes to current system. Evaluation usually consists of several approaches to cover all aspects of the change – e.g. expert groups, statistical data, real-time simulations, fast-time simulations, etc. The paper presents fast-time simulation system AgentFly used to evaluate proposed variants of sectorization. The simulation is able to compute and evaluate metrics important for a decision making of selected sectorization. This approach is applied to a sectorization of the airspace of the Czech Republic. Scenarios were simulated using current and predicted future air traffic. The AgentFly gathers data related to aircraft and ATC to compute requested metrics. Simulation outputs were used for evaluation and comparison of proposed sectorizations.

Mixed Reality Simulation for Incremental Development of Multi-UAV Systems

  • DOI: 10.1109/ICUAS.2017.7991351
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICUAS.2017.7991351
  • Pracoviště: Centrum umělé inteligence
  • Anotace:
    Development of complex multi-robot systems requires time-consuming and expensive testing and, especially in a case of unmanned aerial systems, it aggregates risk of hardware failures and legal issues when operating more than one unmanned aircraft simultaneously. It is highly favorable to deal with most of the eventual design flaws and system bugs before the final field tests in a simulation where the risks are significantly lower. On the other hand, the fidelity of the simulation needs to rise as the system development approaches the final stages and since some phenomena are difficult to be modeled precisely, a partial embodiment of the simulation in the physical world is necessary. In this paper, we present our results in the utilization of mixed reality simulation for incremental development of multi-UAV systems. We present three use cases where this method was used for development of various systems to show its versatility: (i) an unmanned system consisting of heterogeneous team of autonomous unmanned aircraft; (ii) a system for verification of collision avoidance methods among fixed wing UAVs; and (iii) a system for planning collision-free paths for light-sport aircraft.

Simulation of UAS integration into shared airspace for validation of impact on ATM systems

  • Autoři: Ing. Milan Rollo, Ph.D., Selecký, M., Volf, P.
  • Publikace: Proceedings of Integrated Communications Navigation and Surveillance Conference (ICNS) 2017. Piscataway: IEEE, 2017. ISBN 978-1-5090-5375-9.
  • Rok: 2017
  • DOI: 10.1109/ICNSURV.2017.8011945
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNSURV.2017.8011945
  • Pracoviště: Centrum umělé inteligence
  • Anotace:
    n this paper we introduce a modular modeling and simulation framework, which allows validating various aspects of UAS integration into shared airspace and its impact on existing ATM systems. Framework supports large-scale fast-time simulations, as well as real-time simulations with various virtualization levels, i.e. individual software components might be replaced by hardware-in-theloop or human-in-the-loop to increase simulation fidelity. This can simplify and speed up the process of deployment on new concepts addressing various issues of UAS integration in different airspace classes.

Distributed Control of Heterogeneous Team of Autonomous UAVs

  • Autoři: Selecký, M., Ing. Milan Rollo, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: XPONENTIAL 2016: An AUVSI Experience. Arlington: Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, 2016. pp. 707-716. ISBN 9781510828537.
  • Rok: 2016
  • Pracoviště: Centrum umělé inteligence
  • Anotace:
    This work presents a framework for distributed control of heterogeneous team of autonomous UAVs that can be used for both development of planning and coordination methods as well as real-world asset control. Team formation protocols and mission tasks allocation methods for heterogeneous assets were designed to maximize reliability and efficiency of mission execution with respect to available assets and their capabilities. To provide UAVs with a capability to execute various types of missions a framework for orchestration of multiple planning algorithms was implemented that currently supports numerous planners for trajectory planning, collision avoidance, area surveillance and patrolling or target tracking.

Framework for Incremental Development of Complex Unmanned Aircraft Systems

  • Autoři: Selecký, M., Ing. Milan Rollo, Ph.D., Losiewicz, P., Reade, J., Maida, N.
  • Publikace: Proceedings of Integrated Communications Navigation and Surveillance Conference (ICNS) 2015. Piscataway: IEEE, 2015. pp. J31-J39. ISSN 2155-4943. ISBN 978-1-4799-8952-2.
  • Rok: 2015
  • DOI: 10.1109/ICNSURV.2015.7121234
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICNSURV.2015.7121234
  • Pracoviště: Katedra počítačů
  • Anotace:
    In this paper we introduce a modular architecture for command & control (C2) of heterogeneous teams of autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that allows for incremental development and verification of complex systems using a mixed-reality concept. This can simplify and speed up the process of deployment on new payloads or control and reasoning algorithms on hardware assets, as well as the process of increasing the number of UAVs in teams. The reason for this is that the proposed architecture allows for verifying only a subset of the hardware assets or deployed hardware devices at a time while the rest of them remain virtualized. The proposed architecture was implemented as C2 framework and used in flight tests for verification of collision avoidance algorithms on two fixed wing UAVs in real world experiments.

Deployment of Multi-agent Algorithms for Tactical Operations on UAV Hardware

  • Pracoviště: Katedra počítačů
  • Anotace:
    Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly popular for tasks such as surveillance or target tracking in various types of tactical missions. Traditionally, each UAV in a mission is controlled by one or more operators. In our previous work we have developed a collection of distributed algorithms that allow one operator to control a whole team of small UAVs. Here, we report on our successful effort to deploy the developed multi-agent control algorithms to a team of hardware UAVs. To reduce costs and risk, we first developed the multi-agent control algorithms using simulated approximation of the target environment. Then, we gradually refined the model of the target environment by adding higher-fidelity models of the assets and hardware-in-the loop assets. In the final step, the algorithms were deployed and field tested in a full hardware setting and in a mixed-reality setting, where hardware UAVs are accompanied by a a number of simulated UAVs.

Wind Corrections in Flight Path Planning

  • Autoři: Selecký, M., Váňa, P., Ing. Milan Rollo, Ph.D., Meiser, T.
  • Publikace: International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems. 2013, 10(10), ISSN 1729-8806.
  • Rok: 2013
  • DOI: 10.5772/56455
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.5772/56455
  • Pracoviště: Katedra počítačů
  • Anotace:
    When operating autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in real environment it is necessary to deal with effects of wind that drifts the aircraft in certain direction. In such conditions it is hard or even impossible for UAVs with bounded turning rate to follow certain trajectories. We designed a method based on Accelerated A* algorithm that allows the trajectory planner to take the wind effects into account and to generate states that are reachable by UAV. This method was tested on hardware UAV and the reachability of its generated trajectories was compared to the trajectories computed by original Accelerated A*.

Mobility Model for Tactical Networks

  • DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-03668-2_25
  • Odkaz: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03668-2_25
  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    In this paper a synthetic mobility model which represents behavior and movement pattern of heterogeneous units in disaster relief and battlefield scenarios is proposed. These operations usually take place in environment without pre-existing communication infrastructure and units thus have to be connected by wireless communication network. Units cooperate to fulfil common tasks and communication network has to serve high amount of communication requests, especially data, voice and video stream transmissions. To verify features of topology control, routing and interaction protocols software simulations are usually used, because of their scalability, repeatability and speed. Behavior of all these protocols relies on the mobility model of the network nodes, which has to resemble real-life movement pattern. Proposed mobility model is goal-driven and provides support for various types of units, group mobility and realistic environment model with obstacles.

Constraint based Data Streaming Algorithm for Human Assisting Robotic Teams

  • Autoři: Ing. Milan Rollo, Ph.D., Jisl, P., Ing. Petr Benda, Krejník, M.
  • Publikace: Distributed Human-Machine Systems. Praha: CTU Publishing House, 2008, pp. 57-62. ISBN 978-80-01-04027-0.
  • Rok: 2008
  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Teams of autonomous robots are becoming a part of the field operations like disaster relief or battlefield. Although the situation drives towards the use of completely autonomous robotic teams, humans still remain inevitable part of those teams. Number of communication protocols for data streaming in mobile ad-hoc networks was developed, but they are usually suitable for communication among autonomous robots rather than for communication with human team members. In this paper a constraint-based data streaming algorithm that provides the reliable communication among autonomous robots and humans is presented. This algorithm is based on the use of social knowledge about other team members and ensures delivery of the on-demand data streams to human team members while allowing the robots to fulfill their tasks at the same time.

Multi-robot Exploration Using Multi-agent Approach

  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    The paper deals with a problem of exploring an unknown environment by a team of mobile robots. Widely used approach in the robotic community is frontier based exploration. We combine this technique with a multi-agent architecture A-globe, which allows solving the exploration problem with limited communication accessibility and with changing number of participating robots. Frontier based approach heavily depends on path planning algorithm. A novel method combining A* search with harmonic potential fields is also presented. Finally, the Iterative Closest Point localization algorithm has been improved in several ways, in order to increase its speed and robustness. The whole exploration framework has been implemented and tested in both simulated and real environments.

Od osamocených robotů ke kolaborativní robotice

  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Od osamocených robotů ke kolaborativní robotice

Reflective-Cognitive Architecture: From Abstract Concept to Self-Adapting Agent

  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Multi-agent systems penetrate into interesting domains of computing with limited resources, programme code reusability and automated code generation. This paper presents general framework of Reflective-Cognitive agent architecture which enables the agent to alter its own code in runtime according to the changes in the environment. We also present results of architecture implementation showing the plausibility of created prototype.

A-globe: Agent Development Platform with Inaccessibility and Mobility Support

  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    At present several Java-based multi-agent platforms from different developers are available, but none of them fully supports agent mobility and communication inaccessibility simulation. They are thus unsuitable for experiments with large scale real-world simulation. In this chapter we describe architecture of A-globe, fast, scalable and lightweight agent development platform with environmental simulation and mobility support. Beside the functions common to most agent platforms it provides a position-based messaging service, so it can be used for experiments with extensive environment simulation and communication inaccessibility. Simple benchmarks that compare the A-globe performance against other available agent platforms are also included.

An Abstract Architecture for Computational Reflection in Multi-Agent Systems

  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    We propose a general framework for computational reflection in multi-agent systems and address some technical issues related to its implementation. Potentials of computational models of cognition and reflection in a multi-agent system are detailed, and using such models, an abstract architecture of a reflective agent is designed. We also propose important characteristics of reflective multi-agent systems build upon the presented architecture.

Simulation of Underwater Surveillance by a Team of Autonomous Robots

  • Autoři: Ing. Milan Rollo, Ph.D., Novák, P., Jisl, P.
  • Publikace: Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems for Manufacturing. Heidelberg: Springer, 2005. pp. 207-220. ISSN 0302-9743. ISBN 3-540-28237-8.
  • Rok: 2005
  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Within this paper we describe a simulation environment for the underwater surveillance and propose architecture of control part of autonomous robot capable of efficient operation in such environment. Besides this algorithms for decentralized coordination within a group of such robots and video stream transmission path planning are discussed. Development of these algorithms was necessary due to the nature of environment, where individual robots can become temporarily inaccessible.

Strategies for Distributed Underwater Survey

  • Autoři: Ing. Milan Rollo, Ph.D., Novák, P., Jisl, P.
  • Publikace: Multi-Agent Systems and Applications IV. Berlin: Springer, 2005. pp. 657-660. ISSN 0302-9743. ISBN 3-540-29046-X.
  • Rok: 2005
  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Underwater survey by a team of autonomous robots brings couple of problems caused mainly by the communication restrictions due to the nature of environment. Communication range and bandwidth are very limited and individual robots can become temporarily inaccessible. To allow robots' efficient operation in such environment architecture of control part of autonomous robot and new algorithms for decentralized coordination within a group of such robots were developed. Besides these this paper describes experiments addressing different area search and video stream transmission path planning strategies.

A-Globe: Agent Platform with Inaccessibility and Mobility Support

  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    In this paper we describe architecture of newly developed agent platform A-Globe. It is fast and lightweight platform with agent mobility support. Beside the functions common to most of agent platforms it provides the Geographical Information System service to user, so it can be used for experiments with environment simulation and communication inaccessibility. A-Globe performance benchmarks compared against other agent platforms are also stated in this paper.

Alarm Root Cause Detection System

  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Production process control becomes complicated as the complexity of the controlled process grows. To simplify the operator's role many computer based control systems with integrated visualization clients have been developed. In many practical circumstances malfunction of one or more process components results in other related components entering the alarm states. Several alarms appear on the operator's display in a short time making it difficult for the operator to diagnose the root cause quickly. Within this paper we describe a solution of this problem based on a multi-agent system that processes all incoming alarms, identifies the root cause alarms vs. alarms arising in consequence of the roots and presents the diagnostic results to the operator visually.

Communication Security in Multi-Agent Systems

  • Autoři: Ing. Milan Rollo, Ph.D., Novák, P.
  • Publikace: Workshop 2004. Praha: České vysoké učení technické v Praze, 2004, pp. 276-277. ISBN 80-01-02945-X.
  • Rok: 2004
  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Both, research and application development in the area of multi-agent systems currently undertake a rapid expansion. In order to use the multi-agent technology in real applications, it is inevitable to implement security, integrity and authenticity of inter-agent communication. Various security systems, developed for different applications have been used in multi-agent systems (MAS). Alternatively, MAS are designed with respect to the specific communication security requirements. We propose the architecture and implementation of the security system, which implements authentication and secure FIPA-compliant information exchange among the agents.

Simulating Agents´ Mobility and Inaccessibility with A-Globe Multi-agent System

  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Simulating Agents´ Mobility and Inaccessibility with A-Globe Multi-agent System

Solving Communication Inaccessibility in Coalition Operations

  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Inability to communicate the exact information in the right time has become one of the key bottlenecks in real-time control of military operations as well as in planning large scale coalition operations. In this paper we study situations in which communication and coordination inaccessibility can occur and discuss three different solutions of various level of sophistication -- relay agents, acquaintance models and stand-in agents. These methods were deployed in the aglobe multi-agent system. Deployment in two different scenarios is discussed here.

Agent Exchange - Virtual Trading Environment

  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Agent Exchange is a virtual trading environment serving as a test bed for experiments with market simulations, trading strategies and auctioning techniques. Agent Exchange is the distributed environment implementing up-to-date knowledge from multi-agent systems and secure communication.

Bezpečný přenos dat v multiagentních systémech

  • Autoři: Novák, P., Ing. Milan Rollo, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: Znalosti 2003 - sborník příspěvků 2. ročníku konference. Ostrava: VŠB-TUO, 2003, pp. 362-367. ISBN 80-248-0229-5.
  • Rok: 2003
  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    V současné době dochází k velkému rozvoji v oblasti multiagentních systému (MAS) jak na bázi výzkumné, tak aplikační. Aby bylo možno tyto systémy využívat v reálných aplikacích, je nutné zaručit bezpečnost, integritu a autentičnost přenášených dat. Dnes se k tomuto účelu používají bezpečnostní systémy původně navržené pro jiné aplikace, nebo jsou MAS přímo vytvářeny s ohledem na bezpečnost komunikace. Tento článek popisuje návrh univerzálního bezpečnostního systému umožňujícího bezpečnou komunikaci mezi agenty, možnosti autentifikace jednotlivých agentů a zajišťujícího plnou součinnost agentů používajících bezpečnost s již existujícími (nezabezpečenými) agenty. Dále je zde popsán princip začlenění navrženého systému do již existujícího MAS, jeho použití pro mobilní agenty, činnost bezpečnostního systému v případě nedostupnosti tzv. certifikační autority a možnost jejího znovuvytvoření. Bezpečnostní systém byl navržen s ohledem na standardy pro oblast MAS vydanými organizací FIPA.

Communication Security in Multi-Agent Systems

  • Autoři: Novák, P., Ing. Milan Rollo, Ph.D., Hodík, J., Vlček, T.
  • Publikace: Multi-Agent Systems and Applications III. Berlin: Springer, 2003. pp. 454-463. ISSN 0302-9743. ISBN 3-540-40450-3.
  • Rok: 2003
  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Both, research and application development in the area of multi-agent systems currently undertakes rapid expansion. In order to use multi-agent technology in real applications, it is inevitable to ensure security, integrity and authenticity of inter-agent communication. The security systems, developed for different applications have been used for this purpose. Alternatively, multi-agent systems (MAS) are designed with respect to the specific communication security requirements. This paper describes a security system, which implements authentication and secure communication among agents. System ensures full cooperation of agents using the security and already existing (unsecured) agents. Principle of the system integration into already existing MAS is described here as well as its usage for mobile agents, security system's activity during inaccessibility of certification authority (CA) and possibility of CA's recreation. Security system was designed according FIPA standards.

Constraint Logic Programming in Multi-Agent Systems

  • Autoři: Ing. Milan Rollo, Ph.D.,
  • Publikace: POSTER 2002 - Book of Extended Abstracts. Praha: České vysoké učení technické v Praze, Fakulta elektrotechnická, 2002, pp. 41.
  • Rok: 2002
  • Pracoviště: Katedra kybernetiky
  • Anotace:
    Multi-agent system (MAS) is a group of loosely coupled autonomous units (agents). Properties of the MAS are given by integration of the singular agents' properties. Each of them can offer different services to the others and thereby improve capability of the whole community. We have developed such an agent that offers constraint logic programming (CLP) as this service. Using the CLP techniques for problems solving efficiently reduces the size of searched part of the state space and thereby reduces the time necessary to find a solution. However, for complex problems the CLP techniques do not give us a guarantee to find a solution in an acceptable time. Therefore we have investigated possibilities of decomposition and parallelisation of these problems in a multi-agent system that is based on agents designed in first part.

Za stránku zodpovídá: Ing. Mgr. Radovan Suk