Robotic Data Collection in Environmental and Agricultural Applications

Robots are tremendously effective in controlled, factory-like environments.
In contrast, making robots operate in dynamic and complex environments
remains a major challenge.  Robotic Sensor Networks composed of robots and
wireless sensing devices hold the potential to revolutionize environmental
and agricultural sciences by enabling data collection across expansive
environments, over long, sustained periods of time. In this talk, I will
report our progress on building such systems for two applications. The first
application is on monitoring invasive fish (common carp) in inland lakes. In
the second application, an unmanned aerial vehicle and a ground vehicle act
as data mules and collect data for precision agriculture.  After presenting
results from field experiments, I will focus on the problem of designing
robot trajectories to collect data from possibly mobile targets, and present
recent results.