Description
This report studies some examples of how to integrate control systems with sensor networks. In particular, we study how a sensor network can be used as the observer in a control feedback loop for Pursuit-Evasion Games (PEG). Some of the main challenges to using sensor networks for control are properly modelling the lossy communication channel and nonuniform sensor coverage of a sensor network, deriving performance parameters/metrics from the model such as latency and transmission error rate, and devising a control law which effectively utilizes these performance parameters.
We approach this problem by studying some models and simulations of sensor networks and by building testbeds and running experiments. First, we simulate the use of a network connectivity parameter in an optimal path planning controller for pursuit of a target traversing through a sensor network. Then, we look at an example of bounding the performance of a sensor network control application -- finding a probabilistic barrier solution to a single pursuer/single evader pursuit-evasion game. From the implementation side, we discuss the design of an indoor and and outdoor sensor network testbed for multiple-target tracking, a piece of the estimator in the control loop for multiple-evader pursuit-evasion games. Finally, we discuss some preliminary experimental results of multiple-target tracking on these sensor network testbeds.