Motivation

In response to growing concerns that single, monolithic robotic vehicles are expensive, brittle, and vulnerable, there has been a trend toward the development of distributed networks of small, inexpensive vehicles. The capability of these networks to dynamically monitor and sense environmental conditions, while maintaining cost-effectiveness, robustness, and flexibility, is considered to be among their greatest assets. Dynamic sensor networks are critically needed for various tasks, such as search and rescue, surveillance, perimeter defense, locating and mapping chemical and biological hazards, virtual space telescopes, automated assembly of micro-electromechanical systems, and medical surgery (e.g., with nanobots). This research is designed to address this need, with a focus on deploying robust swarms of mobile ground-based sensing agents (robots). This distributed sensing network will self-assemble, adapt as needed, collect sensing data, and fuse the data into an aggregate global picture for situational assessment.

Artificial Physics / Physicomimetics