Integration, Coordination and Control of Multi-Sensor Robot Systems

1 Introduction.- 1.1 Sensors and Intelligent Robotics.- 1.2 Multi-Sensor Robot Systems.- 1.3 Organization of Sensor Systems.- 1.4 The Integration of Sensory Information.- 1.5 Coordination of Sensor Systems.- 1.6 Summary and Overview.- 2 Environment Models and Sensor Integration.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.2 Geometric Environment Models.- 2.3 Uncertain Geometry.- 2.4 Characterizing Uncertain Geometry.- 2.4.1 Stochastic Geometry.- 2.4.2 Well-Condition Stochastic Geometries.- 2.4.3 Stochastic Topology.- 2.5 Manipulating Geometric Uncertainty.- 2.5.1 Transforming Probability.- 2.5.2 Approximate Transforms.- 2.5.3 Properties of Transformations.- 2.6 Gaussian Geometry.- 2.6.1 Changing Locations.- 2.6.2 Changing Feature Descriptions.- 2.7 Gaussian Topology.- 2.8 Summary.- 3 Sensors and Sensor Models.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 Characterizing Sensors.- 3.3 Multi-Sensor System Models.- 3.4 Sensors as Team Members.- 3.5 Observation Models.- 3.6 Dependency Models.- 3.7 State Models.- 3.8 Summary.- 4 Integrating Sensor Observations.- 4.1 Introduction.- 4.2 Decision Models and Information Fusion.- 4.2.1 Decision Theory Preliminaries.- 4.2.2 Robust Decision Procedures.- 4.2.3 Observation Fusion.- 4.2.4 Sparse Data Fusion.- 4.3 Integrating Observations with Constraints.- 4.3.1 Updating a Constrained Random Network.- 4.3.2 The Three-Node Example.- 4.4 Estimating Environment Changes.- 4.4.1 Changes in Location.- 4.4.2 Using Feature Observations to Update Centroid Locations.- 4.4.3 Logical Relations and Updates.- 4.5 Consistent Integration of Geometric Observations.- 4.5.1 The Consistency Problem.- 4.5.2 Consistent Changes in Location.- 4.5.3 Consistent Updating of a Location Network.- 4.5.4 Computational Considerations.- 4.6 Summary.- 5 Coordination and Control.- 5.1 Introduction.- 5.2 The Team Decision Problem.- 5.2.1 The Structure of a Team.- 5.2.2 The Multi-Bayesian Team.- 5.2.3 Opinion Pools.- 5.3 Multi-Sensor Teams.- 5.3.1 Known and Unknown Environments.- 5.3.2 Hypothesis Generation and Verification.- 5.3.3 Constraint and Coordination.- 5.4 Sensor Control.- 5.5 Summary.- 6 Implementation and Results.- 6.1 Introduction.- 6.2 A Structure for Multi-Sensor Systems.- 6.3 Experimental Scope.- 6.4 Implementation.- 6.4.1 The Coordinator.- 6.4.2 The Agents.- 6.4.3 Communication.- 6.5 Simulation Results.- 6.6 Experimental Results.- 6.7 Summary and Conclusions.- 7 Conclusions.- 7.1 Summary Discussion.