INCT 2014: National Institute of Science and Technology for Cooperative Autonomous Systems Applied in Security and Environment

Abstract

This proposal aims the creation of a National Institute of Science and Technology to deal with cooperative autonomous systems (INCT- SAC). Motivated by Brazil’s large territory and population size, wide-ranging geographic features, and economic and social issues, we intend to solve problems related to security and environment. This INCT will address some of these challenges by proposing novel networked robotic systems for underwater maintenance, automobile and cargo transportation grow crops, remote inspection and actuation, and surveillance. Oil extraction in the pre-salt layer, located 250Km from the coast and more than 2 km deep in the ocean, has demanded specific solutions in terms of logistics, maintenance in deep waters, remote operations of platforms, and national security. Urban mobility has been faced with an expressive growing in the number of automobiles in the last years, the Brazilian car fleet is now the 4th in the world, car manufacturers and robotics researchers have been interested in partial or full automation of vehicles navigation systems. In terms of Amazon rainforest and Agriculture, Brazil has the important and complementary objectives in terms of preservation and to increase crop productivity. Advances in communication, computing, and embedded control technologies allow the application of networked systems to large environmental monitoring and coordination of multiple mobile agents for exploration and manipulation. The latest advances in systems theory and emerging information technology to enable the design and implementation of distributed networks for observation, mobility, and manipulation provide the fundamental scope of actual problems we intend to solve. Specifically, this proposal will consider autonomous navigation of aerial vehicles in low altitude to deal, for instance, with power transmission line and gas pipe inspection to alleviate the pilot’s workload and with motion planning strategies for aggressive landing of an actual cargo transportation helicopter in a mobile platform; robotic systems based on lighter-than-air vehicles for environmental monitoring, surveillance and communication applied to the Amazon region. They will provide a virtual sensory barriers against deforestation, telecommunication services to remote and small population areas, technological solutions to coastal communities and remote settlements; Modeling and design of autonomous heavy vehicles with on-line payload measurement system. Advanced driver assistance systems will be developed to deal with safety, congestion and traffic cooperation, and with overloading freight transportation; coordination of heterogeneous aerial and mobile robots in outdoor environment to deal with helicopters and convoy of trucks based on fault tolerant control systems; coordination of heterogeneous robots applied to orange plantation monitoring. This project aims to estimate the amount of fruits, pest detection, the rate of development and degree of maturity of the plants; modeling and design of distributed underwater vehicles for inspection and service of industrial installations. They will deal with servicing, repair, and assembly tasks of oil and gas platforms. Basic development for autonomous and fault tolerant control systems. It will be related with development of control techniques for systems under stochastic variations in its dynamics, with the development of measurement based approach to engineering design and techniques for system identification, and with control of small robots described by swarms of insects which will be performed based on bio-inspired systems. This INCT will bring together an outstanding set of universities, industries, and research institutes of Brazil and abroad. (AU)