Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

© 2005 EU-MOP Consortium

Athens, June 2006

EU-MOP

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Dennis Fritsch

Fraunhofer-Institutefor Manufacturing Engineering andAutomation (IPA)


Introduction

• The EU-MOP robots should be able to response to oil spills autonomously.

• Autonomously means that each unit will have an energy system and an oil skimming device as well as that the EU-MOP units will make its own decisions how to response to the oil spill.

• Thus, each unit needs (artificial) intelligence, which will be given to the units with the help of sensors and control systems.


Control of the EU-MOP units

• In order to achieve an highly robust and flexible oil response system the swarm intelligence approach has been selected as control paradigm for the EU-MOP robots.

• Thus, the EU-MOP swarm is a homogeneous group of robots without any hierarchies or central control system.



• Example: Oil spill in a harbour, several very small patches of oil have to be recovered:



• Strategy of each robot:



4 following robots1 robot moving random paths

pier

oil



obstacle occurs



swarm 1:1 following robots1 robot moving random paths

swarm 2:2 following robots1 robot moving random paths



swarm 1 and swarm 2merge, but the “leading” robot has a malfunction.



swarm will again be split into two swarms with

each 1 “leading” robot and 1 following robot.

Thus, the EU-MOP system will be very flexible and fault-tolerant.


Sensors for the EU-MOP robots

• Nevertheless, the EU-MOP robots will need several sensors, e.g.:

- for the detection of oil or the measurement of the thickness of the oil spill,

- for absolute or relative positioning of itself, its neighbours, all other units, the mother ship, etc.,

- for the detection of collisions with other units, shipwrecks, debris etc.,

- for winds, currents, etc.,

- for the internal state of the unit (malfunction, full of oil, energy low etc.)

- as well as a communication system for communication with other units, with the mother ship and with a human operator.


Sensors for the EU-MOP robots

• Sensors might increase the performance of the robots, nevertheless, sensors also have disadvantages, e.g.:

- increased costs

- increased weight and volume

- increased consumption of power

- increased amount of information that has to be processed

• Thus, the question is: What is the best sensor configuration for the EU-MOP robots? And related to that: What are the best strategies in order to response to the oil spill.

• These questions will be answered with the help of the simulation technique.


Simulation of the EU-MOP robots

• Architecture of the simulation



• Oil Fate model



• Robot / Swarm Simulation



• Visualisation

water

oil slick

harbour

coast



• Visualisation

1 unit



• Visualisation



• Comparison of two types of swarms:

- swarm A consists of units without oil sensor

- swarm B consists of units with oil sensor.

type B:will be able to move

intelligent

type A:will not be able to move intelligent



• Comparison of two types of swarms:

• Conclusion (for this scenario)

- The larger the swarm the better the recovery time.

- The better the sensor configuration the better the recovery time.

- Nevertheless, the swarm without oil sensors reaches for large swarm sizes more or less the same recovery time as the swarm with oil sensor.

Swarm size (N) 1 2 3 4 5 10 20

Recovery time of swarm A

52627 20496 16843 14170 13207 5564 2905

Recovery time of swarm B

37293 14416 11360 9132 8134 4026 2860


Conclusion

• The simulation will be able to determine

- the recovery time,

- the energy consumption,

- the quantity of recovery oil

- the quantity of oil that polluted the coast,

- etc.

• These date will be the basis

- for an assessment of the EU-MOP units, and

- for a cost-benefit-analysis.

• Thus, this proceeding will ensure that the EU-MOP consortium will develop a highly effective, flexible and robust oil response system.

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

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