A novel low-cost, limited-resource approach to autonomous multi-robot exploration and mapping

2010 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Gifford ◽  
Russell Webb ◽  
James Bley ◽  
Daniel Leung ◽  
Mark Calnon ◽  
...  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ching-Wei Chuang ◽  
Harry H. Cheng

Abstract In the modern world, building an autonomous multi-robot system is essential to coordinate and control robots to help humans because using several low-cost robots becomes more robust and efficient than using one expensive, powerful robot to execute tasks to achieve the overall goal of a mission. One research area, multi-robot task allocation (MRTA), becomes substantial in a multi-robot system. Assigning suitable tasks to suitable robots is crucial in coordination, which may directly influence the result of a mission. In the past few decades, although numerous researchers have addressed various algorithms or approaches to solve MRTA problems in different multi-robot systems, it is still difficult to overcome certain challenges, such as dynamic environments, changeable task information, miscellaneous robot abilities, the dynamic condition of a robot, or uncertainties from sensors or actuators. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to handle MRTA problems with Bayesian Networks (BNs) under these challenging circumstances. Our experiments exhibit that the proposed approach may effectively solve real problems in a search-and-rescue mission in centralized, decentralized, and distributed multi-robot systems with real, low-cost robots in dynamic environments. In the future, we will demonstrate that our approach is trainable and can be utilized in a large-scale, complicated environment. Researchers might be able to apply our approach to other applications to explore its extensibility.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-138
Author(s):  
Ratsameekhae Jongthun ◽  
Pasin Hemachudha ◽  
Supaporn Wacharapluesadee ◽  
Thiravat Hemachudha

Amatoxin poisoning is the main cause of death from accidental ingestion of poisonous mushrooms and a mortality rate of 27.3% has been reported in Thailand. Symptoms of mushroom ingestion are often confused with food poisoning; thus, gastroenteritis is not recognised as the first phase of poisoning. Our study assessed the efficacy of N-acetylcysteine (NAC) as a treatment for amatoxin poisoning. We retrospectively analysed 74 medical records over 12 years. The majority (70/74) were treated successfully with NAC; death in the remaining 4 (5.4%) patients was attributed to late presentation in three and advanced alcoholic cirrhosis in one.


BMC Medicine ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina S. Perez-Plazola ◽  
Erika A. Tyburski ◽  
Luke R. Smart ◽  
Thad A. Howard ◽  
Amanda Pfeiffer ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Severe anemia is common and frequently fatal for hospitalized patients in limited-resource settings. Lack of access to low-cost, accurate, and rapid diagnosis of anemia impedes the delivery of life-saving care and appropriate use of the limited blood supply. The WHO Haemoglobin Colour Scale (HCS) is a simple low-cost test but frequently inaccurate. AnemoCheck-LRS (limited-resource settings) is a rapid, inexpensive, color-based point-of-care (POC) test optimized to diagnose severe anemia. Methods Deidentified whole blood samples were diluted with plasma to create variable hemoglobin (Hb) concentrations, with most in the severe (≤ 7 g/dL) or profound (≤ 5 g/dL) anemia range. Each sample was tested with AnemoCheck-LRS and WHO HCS independently by three readers and compared to Hb measured by an electronic POC test (HemoCue 201+) and commercial hematology analyzer. Results For 570 evaluations within the limits of detection of AnemoCheck-LRS (Hb ≤ 8 g/dL), the average difference between AnemoCheck-LRS and measured Hb was 0.5 ± 0.4 g/dL. In contrast, the WHO HCS overestimated Hb with an absolute difference of 4.9 ± 1.3 g/dL for samples within its detection range (Hb 4–14 g/dL, n = 405). AnemoCheck-LRS was much more sensitive (92%) for the diagnosis of profound anemia than WHO HCS (22%). Conclusions AnemoCheck-LRS is a rapid, inexpensive, and accurate POC test for anemia. AnemoCheck-LRS is more accurate than WHO HCS for detection of low Hb levels, severe anemia that may require blood transfusion. AnemoCheck-LRS should be tested prospectively in limited-resource settings where severe anemia is common, to determine its utility as a screening tool to identify patients who may require transfusion.


Author(s):  
James McLurkin ◽  
Adam McMullen ◽  
Nick Robbins ◽  
Golnaz Habibi ◽  
Aaron Becker ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Bo Fu ◽  
Tribhi Kathuria ◽  
Denise Rizzo ◽  
Matthew Castanier ◽  
X. Jessie Yang ◽  
...  

Abstract This work presents a framework for multi-robot tour guidance in a partially known environment with uncertainty, such as a museum. In the proposed centralized multi-robot planner, a simultaneous matching and routing problem (SMRP) is formulated to match the humans with robot guides according to their selected points of interest and generate the routes and schedules for the robots according to uncertain spatial and time estimation. A large neighborhood search algorithm is developed to find sub-optimal low-cost solutions for the SMRP efficiently. The scalability and optimality of the multi-robot planner are first evaluated computationally under different environment sizes and numbers of humans and robots. Then, a photo-realistic multi-robot simulation platform was developed based on Habitat-AI to verify the tour guiding performance in an uncertain indoor environment. Results demonstrate that the proposed centralized tour planner is scalable, makes a smooth tradeoff in the plans under different environmental constraints, and can lead to robust performance with inaccurate uncertainty estimations (within a certain margin).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uma T Plenz ◽  
Patrick O Kanold

Mice are one of several common animal models in neuroscience and mouse behavior is becoming increasingly relevant. Mice are housed either in groups or alone in standard cages during which they show a variety of different behaviors. Moreover, housing conditions might alter the behavior of the mice as do social interactions. When given access to running wheels as an environmental enrichment, mice tend to run long distances preferentially during their dark cycle. However, it is currently not well understood whether and how mice utilize running wheels when single-housed or group-housed. Here we developed a low-cost running wheel data acquisition system to study running in adult C57BL/6 mice at high temporal resolution under different social conditions. As expected, adult C57BL/6 mice prefer to run in stretches during the dark cycle and mostly rest during the light cycle. When single-housed, running bouts occur independent from each other as indicated by an exponential decaying autocorrelation. In contrast, mice run ~50% less when housed in groups of n = 3 and their temporal pattern of running exhibits a power law decay in the autocorrelation indicative of potential social interactions. Our results demonstrate that running wheels are a limited resource for which mice compete for when they are group-housed, thereby reducing their overall running activity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Giulia Reggiani ◽  
Damiano Pizzol ◽  
Daniele Trevisanuto ◽  
Mario Antunes

Gastroschisis is one of the most frequent congenital surgical problems in fetuses and neonates, with a continuously increasing incidence worldwide. In limited-resource settings, the management of this condition is difficult, and the mortality rates are much higher than those observed in high-income countries. We report the case of a newborn with gastroschisis and viscero-abdominal disproportion, submitted to abdominal wall closure through utilization of umbilical cord tissue. This technique has not already been applied in low-resource countries, where it can show advantages such as lower risk of abdominal compartment syndrome and local infection, high availability, and low cost.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 936
Author(s):  
Jiajia Xie ◽  
Rui Zhou ◽  
Jun Luo ◽  
Yan Peng ◽  
Yuan Liu ◽  
...  

Multi-robot cooperative patrolling systems have been extensively employed in the civilian and military fields, including monitoring forest fires, marine search-and-rescue, and area patrol. Multi-robot area patrol problems refer to the activity that a team of robots works cooperatively and regularly to visit the key targets in the given area for security. Following consideration of the low cost and high safety of unmanned surface vehicles (USV), a team of USVs is organized to perform area patrol in a sophisticated maritime environment. In this paper, we establish a mathematical model considering the characteristics of the cooperative patrol task and the limited conditions of USVs. A hybrid partition-based patrolling scheme is proposed for a multi-USV system to visit targets with different importance levels in a maritime area. Firstly, a centralized area partition algorithm is utilized to partition the patrolling area according to the number of USVs. Secondly, a distributed path planning algorithm is applied to planning the patrolling path for each USV to visit the targets in a maritime environment to minimize the length of the patrolling path for the USV team. Finally, comparative experiments between the proposed scheme and other methods are carried out to validate the performance of the hybrid partition-based patrolling scheme. Simulation results and experimental analysis show the efficiency of the proposed hybrid partition-based patrolling scheme compared to several previous patrolling algorithms.


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