A Component-Based Approach to Localization and Collision Avoidance for

In the RUNES project a disaster relief tunnel scenario is being developed in which mobile robots are used to restore the radio network connectivity in a stationary sensor network. A component-based software development approach has been adopted. Two components are described in this paper. A localization component that uses ultrasound and dead reckoning to decide the robot positions and a collision avoidance component that ensures that the robots do not collide with each other. I. INTRODUCTION Within the EU/IST FP6 integrated project RUNES (Re- configurable Ubiquitous Networked Embedded Systems) a disaster relief tunnel scenario has been defined. In the scenario mobile robots are used as mobile radio gateways that ensure the connectivity of the tunnel sensor network. In order to enable this accurate localization, collision detection, and collision avoidance mechanisms are required. In RUNES a component-based approach to software de- velopment has been adopted. The RUNES tunnel scenario and the component model are described in more detail in the introductory paper (1). This paper describes the localization method and the collision avoidance method used in the demonstrator. It also describes how these mechanisms have been implemented using the component framework. A. Outline of the Paper Section II is devoted to the localization component. An ultrasound-based active localization scheme is used. Motiva- tions for this approach are given, as well as details of how it has been implemented. Special attention is given to the Extended Kalman Filter that is used for data fusion. Section III describes the collision avoidance component (CAC). The overall policy is described together with simu- lation and experimental results and implementation details.