Mobile robots are envisioned to play a significant role in a variety of application domains such as collaborative sensing of a target object or environment, assisting homeland security personnel in safe-guarding buildings and detecting intruders or harmful materials, assisting elderly and disabled individuals in daily-life activities, etc. However, several key challenges related to sensing and control algorithms, network protocols, mobility management, localization, and embedded hardware/software need to be addressed in order to realize the full potential of mobile robots. This project deals with the acquisition and development of an adaptive robotic testbed, consisting of four clusters of heterogeneous mobile robots, to support and expand a wide range of ongoing research and education activities in robotics, embedded sensor systems, wireless sensor networks, distributed computing systems, and power management. The testbed includes four Pioneer 3-DX robots, twenty iRobot Create robots, and several desktop and laptop computers to interact with and control the testbed. The robotic testbed brings together diverse faculty researchers and students to facilitate new advances in each of the above areas and enables the validation of research results that would not have been possible without this infrastructure. In addition to providing state-of-the-art equipment for graduate students to perform their experimental research, the developed infrastructure also provides a flexible and cost-effective testbed for use in undergraduate and graduate courses on robotics, embedded systems, distributed systems, etc. Finally, the testbed also serves as an effective vehicle to recruit high-school and minority students, providing excellent synergy with the highly successful high-school FIRST robotics competition.
