CPS: Small: Collaborative Research: RUI: Towards Efficient and Secure Agricultural Information Collection Using a Multi-Robot System

CPS：小型：协作研究：RUI：使用多机器人系统实现高效、安全的农业信息收集

• 批准号: 1931767
• 负责人: Ladislau Boloni
• 金额: $ 13.5万
• 依托单位: The University of Central Florida Board of Trustees
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-03-01 至 2025-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1931767&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CPS; Small; Collaborative; Research; RUI

With the growing world population and diminishing agricultural lands, it becomes imperative to maximize crop yield by protecting crop health and mitigating against pests and diseases. Though there are decades-old practices still in place, there is also growing adoption of so-called precision agriculture solutions, which employ emerging technologies in sensing, automation, and analytics in daily farmland operations. As farmers gain real-time access to critical data (e.g., land and weather conditions) and can quickly share any untoward findings with others, farmland operations are morphing into full-fledged cyber-physical systems. To this end, this project seeks to develop, implement and evaluate a multi-robot agricultural information collection system that is autonomous, efficient and secure.This project led by the University of North Florida (UNF) and supported by the University of Central Florida (UCF) has two main goals: (i) develop and implement novel information collection techniques for autonomous mobile robots that collect, store and share data in an efficient yet secure manner using blockchain,and (ii)and to train undergraduate and graduate students to conduct basic and applied research while closely working with local farmland partners in north-east Florida. Current technologies already use robots for agricultural purposes, but they typically have a high maintenance cost and do not necessarily consider issues related to security and data integrity. The primary objective is to design and deploy a set of autonomous robots that communicate wirelessly and navigate through planned paths in order to collect valuable data. This project will also consider the threat of security attacks by which collected data can be corrupted; seeking new distributed blockchain-based consensus protocols that mitigate the adversarial influence of such attacks. This project also contains a significant research and education component leveraging the leadership of UNF in the context of a primarily undergraduate institution (RUI). Being predominantly an undergraduate institution, there is a lack of opportunity for pursuing higher degrees in the Jacksonville area. This project aligns with an established Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between UNF and UCF to provide a conduit for computing/engineering students to pursue M.S. degrees at UNF that feed seamlessly into Ph.D. programs at UCF. Students will benefit from the new robotics course to be developed at UNF and the ones being offered at UCF. Research progress will be showcased via technical workshops at both institutions to be held annually. Developed solutions are expected to transfer to other cyber-physical system applications, including search and rescue, patrolling, advanced manufacturing, among others. Most broadly, this project will raise awareness among today's teenagers and young adults of the impending agricultural crisis if worldwide food production falls even further behind meeting demands of an increasing global population.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

随着世界人口不断增长和农业土地的减少，必须通过保护作物健康并减轻害虫和疾病来最大化农作物产量。尽管仍然存在数十年的实践，但越来越多地采用了所谓的精确农业解决方案，这些解决方案在每日农田运营中采用新兴技术来进行感应，自动化和分析。随着农民的实时访问关键数据（例如土地和天气状况），并且可以与其他人迅速分享任何不愉快的发现时，农田运营正在变成全面的网络物理系统。 To this end, this project seeks to develop, implement and evaluate a multi-robot agricultural information collection system that is autonomous, efficient and secure.This project led by the University of North Florida (UNF) and supported by the University of Central Florida (UCF) has two main goals: (i) develop and implement novel information collection techniques for autonomous mobile robots that collect, store and share data in an efficient yet secure manner using blockchain,and (ii)and to train本科生和研究生在与佛罗里达州东北部的当地农田合作伙伴密切合作时进行基础和应用研究。当前的技术已经将机器人用于农业目的，但是它们通常具有很高的维护成本，并且不一定考虑与安全和数据完整性有关的问题。主要目的是设计和部署一组自动驾驶机器人，这些机器人无线通信并浏览计划的路径以收集有价值的数据。该项目还将考虑可损坏的安全攻击的威胁；寻求新的基于区块链的共识协议，以减轻此类攻击的对抗性影响。该项目还包含一个重要的研究和教育部分，该项目在主要的本科机构（RUI）的背景下利用了UNF的领导。主要是本科机构，缺乏在杰克逊维尔地区追求更高学位的机会。该项目与UNF和UCF之间的既定理解备忘录（MOU）保持一致，以提供计算/工程专业学生追求M.S.的渠道。 UNF的学位无缝地馈入博士学位。 UCF的程序。学生将受益于在UNF开发的新机器人课程，以及在UCF提供的新机器人课程。研究进度将通过两家机构每年举行的技术研讨会展示。预计开发的解决方案将转移到其他网络物理系统应用中，包括搜救，巡逻，高级制造等。最广泛的是，如果世界各地的粮食生产更加落后于满足全球人口的需求，那么该项目将在当今的青少年和年轻人中提高人们对农业危机的认识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并认为通过使用该基金会的知识分子和更广泛影响的评估来评估Criteria的评估。

项目成果

Robotic Information Gathering via Deep Generative Inpainting

• DOI: 10.1109/smc53992.2023.10394444
• 发表时间: 2023-10
• 期刊: 2023 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC)
• 作者: Tamim Khatib;O. P. Kreidl;Ayan Dutta;Ladislau Bölöni;Swapnoneel Roy

Secure Multi-Robot Adaptive Information Sampling

安全多机器人自适应信息采样

• DOI: 10.1109/ssrr53300.2021.9597867
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: and Rescue Robotics (SSRR
• 作者: Samman, Tamim;Spearman, James;Dutta, Ayan;Kreidl, O. Patrick;Roy, Swapnoneel;Boloni, Ladislau
• 通讯作者: Boloni, Ladislau

Confidence-Guided Path Planning for Mobile Sensors

• DOI: 10.1109/globecom54140.2023.10437189
• 发表时间: 2023-12
• 期刊: GLOBECOM 2023 - 2023 IEEE Global Communications Conference
• 作者: D. Turgut;O. P. Kreidl;Ayan Dutta;Ladislau Bölöni

Exploring the Tradeoffs Between Systematic and Random Exploration in Mobile Sensors

探索移动传感器系统探索和随机探索之间的权衡

• DOI: 10.1145/3616388.3617524
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: ACM
• 作者: Matloob, Samuel;Dutta, Ayan;Kreidl, Patrick;Turgut, Damla;Bölöni, Ladislau
• 通讯作者: Bölöni, Ladislau

Multi-robot Information Sampling Using Deep Mean Field Reinforcement Learning

使用深度平均场强化学习的多机器人信息采样

• DOI: 10.1109/smc52423.2021.9658795
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: and Cybernetics (SMC
• 作者: Said, Tuffa;Wolbert, Jeffery;Khodadadeh, Siavash;Dutta, Ayan;Kreidl, O. Patrick;Boloni, Ladislau;Roy, Swapnoneel
• 通讯作者: Roy, Swapnoneel