coordinated control; coordination variable; hazardous material; mobile robot
Description/Abstract
Sponsorship: INEEL. This paper presents a coordinated control strategy for autonomous monitoring of a dynamically changing hazardous spill. The control strategy is a two level hierarchy that uses use coordination variables to communicate between the levels. The upper level is a resource allocator. The lower level consists of several "commanders" each with a possibly different objective. A physical description of the problem is given, as well as the methods of spill modeling and simulation. Tactics for locating, gravitating to and circling the spill are presented. Finally, both simulation and hardware results are given.