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Faculty Publications

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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Unveiling The Roles Of Binder In The Mechanical Integrity Of Electrodes For Lithium-Ion Batteries, Jianchao Chen, Jianyong Liu, Yue Qi, Tao Sun, Xiaodong Li Jul 2013

Unveiling The Roles Of Binder In The Mechanical Integrity Of Electrodes For Lithium-Ion Batteries, Jianchao Chen, Jianyong Liu, Yue Qi, Tao Sun, Xiaodong Li

Faculty Publications

In lithium-ion secondary batteries research, binders have received the least attention, although the electrochemical performance of Li-ion batteries such as specific capacity and cycle life cannot be achieved if the adhesion strengths between electrode particles and between electrode films and current collectors are insufficient to endure charge-discharge cycling. In this paper, the roles of binders in the mechanical integrity of electrodes for lithium-ion batteries were studied by coupled microscratch and digital image correlation (DIC) techniques. A microscratch based composite model was developed to decouple the carbon particle/particle cohesion strength from the electrode-film/copper-current-collector adhesion strength. The dependences of microscratch coefficient of …

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Numerical Simulation Of Convection In Triangular Cavities To Predict Solar Still Performance, Jeremy D. Lefevre, W. Jerry Bowman, Matthew R. Jones Jul 2013

Numerical Simulation Of Convection In Triangular Cavities To Predict Solar Still Performance, Jeremy D. Lefevre, W. Jerry Bowman, Matthew R. Jones

Faculty Publications

To improve modeling of solar still behavior, the convection correlations currently used need to be improved upon. Variations in operating parameters and cover geometries make it difficult to use a single correlation to describe the operation of all solar stills. In this work, three right triangles (representing covers at 15, 30, and 45 deg) were modeled, meshed, and solved to predict the convection heat transfer inside for a variety of operating conditions. For a correlation of the form Nu = C · Ran, it was found that C = 1.1, 0.60, and 0.71, and n = 0.19, 0.24, …

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Dynamic Optimization Of A Solar Thermal Energy Storage System Over A 24 Hour Period Using Weather Forecasts, Kody Powell, John Hedengren, Thomas F. Edgar Jul 2013

Dynamic Optimization Of A Solar Thermal Energy Storage System Over A 24 Hour Period Using Weather Forecasts, Kody Powell, John Hedengren, Thomas F. Edgar

Faculty Publications

A solar thermal power plant is used as a case study for dynamic heat integration with thermal energy storage. Findings show that thermal energy storage gives the system the ability to make the power dispatchable. Additionally, by solving a 24-hour dynamic optimization problem where the plant temperatures and power output are variable allows the system to capture and harvest a higher percentage of solar energy, with the most benefit occurring on mostly cloudy days. The solar energy captured increases 64% from 4.75 MWh to 7.80 MWh using this scheme. Hybrid plant operation and the ability to bypass the storage tanks …

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Inviscid Analysis Of Extended Formation Flight, James Kless, Michael Aftosmis, Andrew Ning, Marian Nemec Jul 2013

Inviscid Analysis Of Extended Formation Flight, James Kless, Michael Aftosmis, Andrew Ning, Marian Nemec

Faculty Publications

Flying airplanes in extended formations, with separation distances of tens of wingspans, significantly improves safety while maintaining most of the fuel savings achieved in close formations. The present study investigates the impact of roll trim and compressibility at a fixed lift coefficient on the benefits of extended formation flight. An Euler solver with adjoint-based mesh refinement combined with a wake propagation model is used to analyze a two-body echelon formation at a separation distance of 30 spans. Two geometries are examined: a simple wing and a wing-body geometry. Energy savings, quantified by both formation drag fraction and span efficiency factor, …

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Model Predictive Control With A Rigorous Model Of A Solid Oxide Fuel Cell, Lee T. Jacobsen, John Hedengren Jul 2013

Model Predictive Control With A Rigorous Model Of A Solid Oxide Fuel Cell, Lee T. Jacobsen, John Hedengren

Faculty Publications

Degradation of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) can be minimized by maintaining reliability parameters during load changes. These reliability parameters are critical to maintain power generation efficiency over an extended life of the SOFC. For SOFCs to be commercially viable, the life must exceed 20,000 hours for load following applications. This is not yet achieved because transient stresses damage the fuel cell and degrade the performance over time. This study relates the development of a dynamic model for SOFC systems in order to predict optimal manipulated variable moves along a prediction horizon. The model consists of hundreds of states and …

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Current Barriers To Successful Implementation Of Fist Principles, Brandon Keller, Joseph R. Wirthlin Jul 2013

Current Barriers To Successful Implementation Of Fist Principles, Brandon Keller, Joseph R. Wirthlin

Faculty Publications

The Fast, Inexpensive, Simple, and Tiny (FIST) framework proposes a broad set of organizational values, but provides limited guidance on practical implementation. Implementing FIST principles requires clarifying the definitions of “fast,” “inexpensive,” and “simple,” recognizing where FIST does and does not apply. Additionally, a subset of the FIST heuristics was expanded upon to increase their usefulness for practitioners. The primary research findings are that FIST principles are less conducive for highly complex or novel systems, immature technologies, future needs, acquisitions in early development phases, or when performance is the foremost value. FIST principles were also found to be constrained by …

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Why A 15 Minute Biological Detection System?, Doug Lewis Jul 2013

Why A 15 Minute Biological Detection System?, Doug Lewis

Faculty Publications

The biological defense community needs to take a hard look at the requirements and assumptions we use to develop our biological sensors. Today the point sensors currently deployed or in development can offer at best “near real time” detection. This translates into approximately 10-20 minutes from the time an agent passes over the device until an alarm is issued. Why are we working to develop detection hardware which in reality contributes little to no advantage to an operational environment? Should the DOD resist fielding (in the near term) “near real time” detection systems, and instead field slower (but much more …

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Verifying Performance For Autonomous Robot Missions With Uncertainty, Damian M. Lyons, Ronald Arkin, Tsung-Ming Liu, Shu Jiang, Paramesh Nirmal Jun 2013

Verifying Performance For Autonomous Robot Missions With Uncertainty, Damian M. Lyons, Ronald Arkin, Tsung-Ming Liu, Shu Jiang, Paramesh Nirmal

Faculty Publications

Establishing performance guarantees for robot missions is especially important for C-WMD applications. Software verification techniques, such as model checking (Clark 1999, Jhala & Majumdar 2009), can be applied to robotic applications but characteristics of this application area, including addition of a robot environment model and handling continuous spatial location well, exacerbate state explosion, a key weakness of these methods. We have proposed an approach to verifying robot missions that shifts the focus from state-based analysis onto the solution of a set of flow equations (Lyons et al. 2012). The key novelty introduced in this paper is a probabilistic spatial representation …

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Public Works For Public Learning: A Case Study, Thalia Anagnos, Beckey Carroll, Shannon Weiss, David Heil Jun 2013

Public Works For Public Learning: A Case Study, Thalia Anagnos, Beckey Carroll, Shannon Weiss, David Heil

Faculty Publications

Large scale and small scale public works projects are important in the smooth operation of every community, yet a majority of the population has little awareness of how these projects work and what their functions are. Few non-engineers understand the engineering challenges of delivering clean water, disposing of our sewage, or changing a traditional intersection into a round-about, a project that seems quite simple on the surface. A consortium of public works engineers, science museums, faculty, and exhibit evaluators were awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to build an outdoor museum next to a large suspension bridge. The …

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Public Works Projects As Vehicles For Engineering Education And Outreach, Shannon Weiss, David Heil, Thalia Anagnos Jun 2013

Public Works Projects As Vehicles For Engineering Education And Outreach, Shannon Weiss, David Heil, Thalia Anagnos

Faculty Publications

America is built on small and large feats of public works engineering that, although often taken for granted, affect almost every aspect of our daily lives. So how can we celebrate these marvels of utilitarian infrastructure and use them to teach public audiences about the engineering principles, materials, and human innovations that make them possible? This case study will share how one project addressed these questions by leveraging informal learning strategies, multi-agency collaborations, and new media technologies to explain the history and engineering of one of the world’s most recognizable public work sites: the Golden Gate Bridge. This paper will …

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Curriculum Exchange: “Make Your Own Earthquake”, Sandra Seale, Thalia Anagnos, Lelli Van Den Einde Jun 2013

Curriculum Exchange: “Make Your Own Earthquake”, Sandra Seale, Thalia Anagnos, Lelli Van Den Einde

Faculty Publications

A consortium of American universities is involved in earthquake engineering practice and research. Each campus of the consortium participates in outreach and education activities for the local schools and the public. One campus of the consortium, which operates earthquake field sites, designed a K-12 activity called “Make Your Own Earthquake” (MYOE). MYOE involves setting up earthquake field equipment (seismic instruments, data loggers, and computers) in a classroom. Children jump for 10 seconds, see their earthquake trace live on a computer screen and then take home a printed copy of their personal earthquake. Software was developed specifically for this activity. MYOE …

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Curriculum Exchange: Visualization Tools And Online Courses For Teaching About Earthquakes, Sandra Seale, Thalia Anagnos Jun 2013

Curriculum Exchange: Visualization Tools And Online Courses For Teaching About Earthquakes, Sandra Seale, Thalia Anagnos

Faculty Publications

As part of a national consortium of universities practicing and doing research in earthquake engineering, our site has developed several videos for use in outreach and education. Visualization tools are extremely useful when teaching about how earthquakes shake the ground and the response of buildings to that shaking. Here we present videos that are targeted to specific audiences: (1) Animations of the response of two model buildings to two earthquakes are targeted at grade 6-16 students. The videos were created with data recorded on these test structures from the two earthquakes. The two events were both located directly below the …

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First Spectroscopic Identification Of Pyrocarbonate For High Co2 Flux Membranes Containing Highly Interconnected Three Dimensional Ionic Channels, Lingling Zhang, Xinyu Huang, Changyong Qin, Kyle Brinkman, Yunhui Gong, Siwei Wang, Kevin Huang Jun 2013

First Spectroscopic Identification Of Pyrocarbonate For High Co2 Flux Membranes Containing Highly Interconnected Three Dimensional Ionic Channels, Lingling Zhang, Xinyu Huang, Changyong Qin, Kyle Brinkman, Yunhui Gong, Siwei Wang, Kevin Huang

Faculty Publications

Identification of the existence of pyrocarbonate ion C2O52− in molten carbonates exposed to a CO2 atmosphere provides key support for a newly established bi-ionic transport model that explains the mechanisms of high CO2 permeation flux observed in mixed oxide-ion andcarbonate-ion conducting (MOCC) membranes containing highly interconnected three dimensional ionic channels. Here we report the first Raman spectroscopic evidence of C2O52− as an active species involved in the CO2-transport process of MOCC membranes exposed to a CO2atmosphere. The two new broad peaks centered at 1317 cm−1 …

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Path Loss In An Urban Peer-To-Peer Channel For Six Public-Safety Frequency Bands, David W. Matolak, Qian Zhang, Qiong Wu Jun 2013

Path Loss In An Urban Peer-To-Peer Channel For Six Public-Safety Frequency Bands, David W. Matolak, Qian Zhang, Qiong Wu

Faculty Publications

We provide path loss data and models for a peer-to-peer wireless channel for an urban environment in six public safety bands, for simultaneous transmission to five spatially separated receiving sites. Results are from measurements in Denver, Colorado. The six frequencies at which we measured are (in MHz) 430, 750, 905, 1834, 2400, and 4860. Both line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight conditions were covered, and we quantify path loss exponents and linear-fit standard deviations as functions of frequency and location. Line-of-sight results agree with prior work, but non-line-of-sight exponents, from 3.6-7.3, are generally larger than in most other references.

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Exceed: Excellence In Your Engineering Education Summer Transition Program, Stacy Gleixner, Katherine Casey, Jared Tuberty, S. Latic, Patricia Backer, Emily Allen Jun 2013

Exceed: Excellence In Your Engineering Education Summer Transition Program, Stacy Gleixner, Katherine Casey, Jared Tuberty, S. Latic, Patricia Backer, Emily Allen

Faculty Publications

EXCEED: Excellence in Your Engineering Education is a ten day, residential summer transition program that was designed to improve retention and graduation rates at San José State University (SJSU). SJSU is a large, public institution in the West with a very diverse student population. However, the university has lower graduation and retention rates for certain student populations in engineering including underrepresented groups and first generation college students. This transition program was designed to meet five outcomes: acculturate the students to the College of Engineering and the university, enhance math and writing preparation, build community amongst the cohort of students, enhance …

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How Important Is The Wow Factor In First Year Engineering Courses?, Thalia Anagnos, Burford Furman, Ping Hsu, Patricia Backer Jun 2013

How Important Is The Wow Factor In First Year Engineering Courses?, Thalia Anagnos, Burford Furman, Ping Hsu, Patricia Backer

Faculty Publications

This paper discusses the effectiveness of using projects with a “wow factor,” that is, engaging and challenging hands-on projects, in a freshman engineering course to motivate studentretention and persistence in engineering. Our course enrolls approximately 700 students per year in a lecture/laboratory format. Our university, a large comprehensive public university in thewest, has offered a freshman introduction to engineering course since 1992. In its original form, the course was part of a lower division engineering core, required of all engineering majors, and focused on computational skills (spreadsheets and MATLAB).In 1997, based on faculty and student feedback, a task force was …

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Advanced Deepwater Monitoring System, David Brower, John Hedengren, Reza Asgharzadeh Shishavan, Alexis Brower Jun 2013

Advanced Deepwater Monitoring System, David Brower, John Hedengren, Reza Asgharzadeh Shishavan, Alexis Brower

Faculty Publications

This study investigates new methods to improve deepwater monitoring and addresses installation of advanced sensors on ”already deployed” risers, flowlines, trees, and other deepwater devices. A major shortcoming of post installed monitoring systems in subsea is poor coupling between the sensor and structure. This study provided methods to overcome this problem. Both field testing in subsea environments and laboratory testing were performed. Test articles included actual flowline pipe and steel catenary risers up to twenty-four inches in diameter. A monitoring device resulting from this study can be installed in-situ on underwater structures and could enhance productivity and improve safety of …

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Performance Of Solid Oxide Iron-Air Battery Operated At 550°C, Xuan Zhao, Yunhui Gong, Xue Li, Nansheng Xu, Kevin Huang May 2013

Performance Of Solid Oxide Iron-Air Battery Operated At 550°C, Xuan Zhao, Yunhui Gong, Xue Li, Nansheng Xu, Kevin Huang

Faculty Publications

“Metal-air” batteries have garnered much attention in recent years due to their high intrinsic specific energy and use of inexhaustible and storage-free oxygen source -air- for the “metal-oxygen” reaction. In this study, we report theperformance of a new type of all solid-state “iron-air” battery operated at 550°C. The results show that CeO2 nanoparticles incorporated into the Fe-Fe3O4 redox-couple can improve the specific energy (Wh/kg) and round trip efficiency by 15% and 29%, respectively, over the baseline Fe-Fe3O4 battery. Use of supported Fe-Fe3O4 nanoparticles as the redox couple can increase the …

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Micro Modeling Study Of Cathode/Electrolyte Interfacial Stresses For Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, Xinfang Jin, Xingjian Xue May 2013

Micro Modeling Study Of Cathode/Electrolyte Interfacial Stresses For Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, Xinfang Jin, Xingjian Xue

Faculty Publications

Delamination of the cathode/electrolyte interface is an important degradation phenomenon in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). While the thermal stress has been widely recognized as one of the major reasons for such delamination failures, the role of chemical stress does not receive too much attention. In this paper, a micro-model is developed to study the cathode/electrolyte interfacial stresses, coupling oxygen ion transport process with structural mechanics. Results indicate that the distributions of chemical stress are very complicated at the cathode/electrolyte interface and show different patterns from those of thermal stress. The maximum principal stresses take place at the cathode/electrolyte interface …

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Floating Electrode Electrowetting On Hydrophobic Dielectric With An Sio2 Layer, Mehdi Khodayari, Benjamin Hahne, Nathan B. Crane, Alex A. Volinsky May 2013

Floating Electrode Electrowetting On Hydrophobic Dielectric With An Sio2 Layer, Mehdi Khodayari, Benjamin Hahne, Nathan B. Crane, Alex A. Volinsky

Faculty Publications

Floating electrode electrowetting is caused by dc voltage applied to a liquid droplet on the Cytop surface, without electrical connection to the substrate. The effect is caused by the charge separation in the floating electrode. A highly-resistive thermally-grown SiO2 layer underneath the Cytop enables the droplet to hold charges without leakage, which is the key contribution. Electrowetting with an SiO2 layer shows a memory effect, where the wetting angle stays the same after the auxiliary electrode is removed from the droplet in both conventional and floating electrode electrowetting. Floating electrode electrowetting provides an alternative configuration for developing advanced electrowetting-based devices.

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Extension Of Dna In A Nanochannel As A Rod-To-Coil Transition, Douglas R. Tree, Yanwei Wang, Kevin D. Dorfman May 2013

Extension Of Dna In A Nanochannel As A Rod-To-Coil Transition, Douglas R. Tree, Yanwei Wang, Kevin D. Dorfman

Faculty Publications

DNA confinement in nanochannels is emerging as an important tool for genomics and an excellent platform for testing the theories of confined wormlike polymers. Using cutting-edge, large scale Monte Carlo simulations of asymptotically long wormlike chains, we show that, in analogy to the rod-to-coil transition for free wormlike polymers, there exists a universal, Gauss–de Gennes regime that connects the classic Odijk and de Gennes regimes of channel-confined chains. For DNA in a nanochannel, this Gauss–de Gennes regime spans practically the entire experimentally relevant range of channel sizes, including the nanochannels used in an incipient genome mapping technology.

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Performance Verification For Behavior-Based Robot Missions, Damian M. Lyons, Ronald Arkin, Shu Jiang, Tsung-Ming Liu, Paramesh Nirmal, J. Deeb May 2013

Performance Verification For Behavior-Based Robot Missions, Damian M. Lyons, Ronald Arkin, Shu Jiang, Tsung-Ming Liu, Paramesh Nirmal, J. Deeb

Faculty Publications

Certain robot missions need to perform predictably in a physical en-vironment that may only be poorly characterized in advance. This requirement raises many issues for existing approaches to software verification. An approach based on behavior-based controllers in a process-algebra framework is proposed by Lyons et al [15] to side-step state combinatorics. In this paper we show that this approach can be used to generate a Dynamic Bayesian Network for the problem, and that verification is reduced to a filtering problem for this network. We present validation results for the verification of a multiple waypoint robot mission using this approach.

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A Polarizable Reactive Force Field For Water To Enable Molecular Dynamics Simulations Of Proton Transport, Abhishek Asthana, Dean R. Wheeler May 2013

A Polarizable Reactive Force Field For Water To Enable Molecular Dynamics Simulations Of Proton Transport, Abhishek Asthana, Dean R. Wheeler

Faculty Publications

A new polarizable water model is developed for molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the proton transport process. The interatomic potential model has three important submodels corresponding to electrostatic interactions, making and breaking of covalent bonds, and treatment of electron exchange and correlation through a van der Waals potential. A polarizable diffuse charge density function was used to describe Coulombic interactions between atoms. Most of the model parameters were obtained from ab initio data for a lone water molecule. Molecules respond realistically to their electrochemical environment by the use of coupled fluctuating charge and fluctuating dipole dynamics, which controlled the charge …

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Relative Navigation Approach For Vision-Based Aerial Gps-Denied Navigation, Robert C. Leishman, Timothy Mclain, Randal W. Beard May 2013

Relative Navigation Approach For Vision-Based Aerial Gps-Denied Navigation, Robert C. Leishman, Timothy Mclain, Randal W. Beard

Faculty Publications

GPS-denied aerial flight is a popular research topic. The problem is challenging and requires knowledge of complex elements from many distinct disciplines. Additionally, aerial vehicles can present challenging constraints such as stringent payload limitations and fast vehicle dynamics. In this paper we propose a new architecture to simplify some of the challenges that constrain GPS-denied aerial flight. At the core, the approach combines visual graph-SLAM with a multiplicative extended Kalman filter. More importantly, for the front end we depart from the common practice of estimating global states and instead keep the position and yaw states of the MEKF relative to …

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Analysis Of An Improved Imu-Based Observer For Multirotor Helicopters, John Charles Macdonald, Robert C. Leishman, Randal W. Beard, Timothy W. Mclain May 2013

Analysis Of An Improved Imu-Based Observer For Multirotor Helicopters, John Charles Macdonald, Robert C. Leishman, Randal W. Beard, Timothy W. Mclain

Faculty Publications

Multirotor helicopters are increasingly popular platforms in the robotics community. Making them fully autonomous requires accurate state estimation. We review an improved dynamic model for multirotor helicopters and analyze the observability properties of an estimator based on this model. The model allows better use of IMU data to facilitate accurate state estimates even when updates from a sensor measuring position become less frequent and less accurate. We demonstrate that the position update rate can be cut in half versus typical approaches while maintaining the same accuracy. We also find that velocity estimates are at least twice as accurate no matter …

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Tanker Acquisition: A Systems Engineering Perspective, Sarah Lynch, Alan R. Heminger, David D. Mattioda May 2013

Tanker Acquisition: A Systems Engineering Perspective, Sarah Lynch, Alan R. Heminger, David D. Mattioda

Faculty Publications

A short examination of air refueling, specifically its past, present, and future, offers valuable insight into the developmental needs of this critical capability. This article seeks not only to showcase an appreciation for the roots of air refueling but also to high- light the requirement for sound systems engineering in conjunction with the creativity and willingness to take risks, as exhibited by our forefathers in the field. These attributes are vital to furthering air- refueling technologies and capabilities as well as refining the some- what flawed tanker-procurement process employed today.

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A High Energy Density All Solid-State Tungsten-Air Battery, Xuan Zhao, Xue Li, Yunhui Gong, Nansheng Xu, Kevin Gregory Romito, Kevin Huang Apr 2013

A High Energy Density All Solid-State Tungsten-Air Battery, Xuan Zhao, Xue Li, Yunhui Gong, Nansheng Xu, Kevin Gregory Romito, Kevin Huang

Faculty Publications

An all solid-state tungsten–air battery using solid oxide–ion electrolyte is demonstrated as a new chemistry for advanced energy storage. The unique design of separated energy storage from the electrodes allows for free volume expansion–contraction during electrical cycles and new metal–air chemistry to be explored conveniently.

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Reversible Mn Segregation At The Polar Surface Of Lithium Tetraborate, Christina L. Dugan, Robert L. Hengehold, Stephen R. Mchale, Juan A. Colon Santana, John W. Mcclory, Volodymyr T. Adamiv, Yaroslav V. Burak, Ya B. Losovyj, Peter A. Dowben Apr 2013

Reversible Mn Segregation At The Polar Surface Of Lithium Tetraborate, Christina L. Dugan, Robert L. Hengehold, Stephen R. Mchale, Juan A. Colon Santana, John W. Mcclory, Volodymyr T. Adamiv, Yaroslav V. Burak, Ya B. Losovyj, Peter A. Dowben

Faculty Publications

We find Mn surface segregation for single crystals of Mn doped Li2B4O7, nominally Li1.95Mn0.05B4O7(001), but as the temperature increases, evidence of this Mn surface segregation diminishes significantly. At room temperature, the surface photovoltaic charging is significant for this pyroelectric material but is quenched at a temperature well below that seen for the undoped Li2B4O7 samples. The suppression of surface charging in the region of 120 °C that accompanies the temperature of Mn dissolution in the bulk of Li2B4 …

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Revisiting Blob Theory For Dna Diffusivity In Slitlike Confinement, Liang Dai, Douglas R. Tree, Johan R. C. Van Der Maarel, Kevin D. Dorfman, Patrick S. Doyle Apr 2013

Revisiting Blob Theory For Dna Diffusivity In Slitlike Confinement, Liang Dai, Douglas R. Tree, Johan R. C. Van Der Maarel, Kevin D. Dorfman, Patrick S. Doyle

Faculty Publications

Blob theory has been widely applied to describe polymer conformations and dynamics in nanoconfinement. In slit confinement, blob theory predicts a scaling exponent of 2/3 for polymer diffusivity as a function of slit height, yet a large body of experimental studies using DNA produce a scaling exponent significantly less than 2/3. In this work, we develop a theory that predicts that this discrepancy occurs because the segment correlation function for a semiflexible chain such as DNA does not follow the Flory exponent for length scales smaller than the persistence length. We show that these short length scale effects contribute significantly …

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Fusion Of Ranging Data From Robot Teams Operating In Confined Areas, Damian M. Lyons, Karma Shrestha, Tsung-Ming Liu Apr 2013

Fusion Of Ranging Data From Robot Teams Operating In Confined Areas, Damian M. Lyons, Karma Shrestha, Tsung-Ming Liu

Faculty Publications

We address the problem of fusing laser ranging data from multiple mobile robots that are surveying an area as part of a robot search and rescue or area surveillance mission. We are specifically interested in the case where members of the robot team are working in close proximity to each other. The advantage of this teamwork is that it greatly speeds up the surveying process; the area can be quickly covered even when the robots use a random motion exploration approach. However, the disadvantage of the close proximity is that it is possible, and even likely, that the laser ranging …

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