sfu

Fast and Frugal Sustain and Resupply (FASR) Project

Sponsored by Defense Research and Development Suffield, Canada (DRDC)


image of Stage experiment from above chatterbox robots

Goals

This project studies a multi-robot system that works to transport resources between known locations, recharging as necessary to continue their work indefinitely. The problem can be broken into three main parts:
  1. Navigation: developing methods for reliable and efficient point-to-point navigation in large-scale multi-robot systems. In particular, we investigate decentralised strategies that are resistant to spatial interference between robots.
  2. Task allocation: developing models and methods for allocating robots to tasks to trade off global throughput and energy usage. We compare the performance of centralised and decentralized methods, with very different resource requirements.
  3. Recharging: developing models and methods for deciding when to switch between working and recharging (a special case of task allocation with unusual properties), and strategies for placing charging stations to improve efficiency.
Importantly, we focus on the complete system as it tackles a real-world task. We aim to improve the state of the art in both the effectiveness, measured by throughput, and the efficiency, measured by power dissipated.

We have also demonstrated a novel human-robot interface which allows an uninstrumented human to allocate select individual robots from the population and assign them to tasks using face direction and gestures alone.

To enable this work, we also develop research tools: the Stage multi-robot simulator, and the Chatterbox robot colony. Experiments and demonstrations are performed using the simulation and on real robots.

People

More about Autonomy Lab people and projects can be found the lab web site.

Publications

[ journal articles | conference papers | book chapters | PhD | MSc | tech reports | others ]

Journal articles

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[1] Richard T. Vaughan and Jens Wawerla. Publishing identifiable experiment code and configuration is important, good and easy. Autonomous Robots, To appear, accepted subject to revision February 2010.
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[2] Yaroslav Litus, Pawel Zebrowski, and Richard T. Vaughan. A distributed heuristic for energy-efficient multi-robot multi-place rendezvous. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 25(1):130-135, 2009.
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[3] Richard T. Vaughan. Massively multi-robot simulations in stage. Swarm Intelligence, 2(2-4):189-208, 2008.
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Refereed conference papers

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[1] Alex Couture-Beil, Richard T. Vaughan, and Greg Mori. Selecting and commanding individual robots in a vision-based multi-robot system. In Proceedings of the Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision, May 2010. (to appear).
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[2] Yaroslav Litus and Richard T. Vaughan. Fall in! sorting a group of robots with a continuous controller. In Proceedings of the Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision, May 2010. (to appear).
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[3] Jens Wawerla and Richard T. Vaughan. A fast and frugal method for team-task allocation in a multi-robot transportation system. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May 2010. (to appear).
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[4] Abbas Sadat and Richard T. Vaughan. Blinkered lost: Restricting sensor field of view can improve scalability in emergent multi-robot trail following. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May 2010. (to appear).
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[5] Jens Wawerla and Richard T. Vaughan. Robot task switching under diminishing returns. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'09), St. Loius, MO, October 2009.
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[6] Alex Couture-Beil and Richard T. Vaughan. Adaptive mobile charging stations for multi-robot systems. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'09), St. Loius, MO, October 2009.
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[7] Adam Lein and Richard T. Vaughan. Adapting to non-uniform resource distributions in robotic swarm foraging through work-site relocation. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'09), St. Loius, MO, October 2009.
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[8] Jens Wawerla and Richard T. Vaughan. Publishing identifiable experiment code and configuration is important, good and easy. In Workshop on Good Experimental Methodology in Robotics, at Robotics Science and Systems, June 2009.
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[10] Jens Wawerla and Richard T. Vaughan. Optimal robot recharging for time discounted labour. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Artificial Life (ALife XI), August 2008.
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[11] Yaroslav Litus and Richard T. Vaughan. Distributed gradient optimization with embodied approximation. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Artificial Life (ALife XI), August 2008.
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[12] Adam Lein and Richard T. Vaughan. Adaptive multi-robot bucket brigade foraging. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Artificial Life (ALife XI), August 2008.
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PhD Theses

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[1] Jens Wawerla. Task-switching for self-sufficient robots. PhD thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2010.
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[2] Yaroslav Litus. Using spatial embeddedness and physical embodiment for computation in multi-robot systems. PhD thesis [proposal accepted, preparing for submission], Simon Fraser University, 2010.
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MSc Theses

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[1] Alex Couture-Beil. Selecting and commanding individual robots in a multi-robot system. Master's thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2010.
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[2] Adam Lein. Adaptive foraging in robotic swarms. Master's thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2010.
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Technical Reports

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[1] Richard T. Vaughan, Yaroslav Litus, Jens Wawerla, and Adam Lein. Autonomous sustain and resupply: Phase 1 report. Technical report, Defense R&D Canada, 2008. Contract Scientific Authority Greg Broten. Copyright (c) Her Majesty the Queen as represented by the Minister of National Defence, Canada.
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Others

bibtex2html output
[1] Alex Couture-Beil, Richard T. Vaughan, and Greg Mori. Selecting and commanding individual robots in a vision-based multi-robot system. Video Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, March 2010. (nominated for Best Video award).
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[2] Yaroslav Litus and Richard Vaughan. Energy-efficient multi-robot rendezvous: Parallel solutions by embodied approximation. Refereed abstract at the Workshop on Algorithmic Equivalences Between Biological and Robotic Swarms, June 2007.
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[ journal articles | conference papers | book chapters | PhD | MSc | tech reports | others ]

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