CDA-9703220 Bajcsy, Ruzena University of Pennsylvania Asymmetric Bandwidth Channels: Applications to Real-Time Computing and Robotics This award is for the acquisition of infrastructure to support research which is to investigate a cost-effective and broadly deployed communication model, Asymmetric Bandwidth Channels, for which few abstractions in computer science are available. Research into the application of systems characterized by low-bandwidth interactive channels between clients and server, and a high-bandwidth broadcast from server to clients will be conducted. The proposed work will develop communications abstractions that applications can effectively use for such an infrastructure, and computational models for these abstractions. Model performance will then be evaluated on a testbed of multiple semi-autonomous robotic agents. The challenging problems to be addressed in this project include: (1) selecting which path to take from server to client; (2) determining the degree of broadcast channel sharing possible in a computer communications environment; and (3) scheduling transmissions from the shared broadcast terminal. The research will also target three fundamental problems underlying coordination of robotic agents: (1) development of world models based on observations of individual agents and exploration of an unknown or a partially known environment to build a complete model; (2) task planning based on the world model while accounting for possible uncertainties and latencies; and (3) control of robotic agents based on visual and other sensory information.
