Progress 09/01/13 to 08/31/17
Outputs
Target Audience:The primary target audiences of this work are aquatic scientists and K-16 students. Secondary audiences include other scientists and the general public. We have given talks and poster presentations at a number of scientific meetings to disseminate and obtain feedback on our work (see the products section of this report for additional publications). We have also engaged in activities and talks to ensure that our work reaches possible non-aquatic scientist end users of our system, including talks to the Nebraska Surface Water Monitoring Council, Nebraska Water Resources Advisory Panel, Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, and members of the Nebraska Natural Resource Distract. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In the this project has provided training and professional development for numerous undergraduate and graduate students and a Post-Doc, specifically: 1. Postdoc Keunyea Song at the University of Kansas conducted collaborative research on the effectiveness of UAV as an advanced limnologic water sampling and monitoring tool. She led the experimental design, data collection, analysis and drafting a now accepted manuscript. Her work on this project improved her knowledge and research experience on water sampling and monitoring tools including advanced techniques. Such experiences and knowledge led her to a new position in Washington State Department of Ecology as a stormwater monitoring scientist. 2. At KU two under graduates (Austin Brewer and Shawyan Ahmadian) assisted with developing the field plan and collecting the data for the joint experiments at KU. 3. This work was central to the PhD research of female student Michaella Chung who will graduate Spring 2018. It also formed the basis of her successful NSF GRF proposal. 4. Undergraduate student Andy Nguyen from Berkeley engaged in the observational efforts. 5. PhD student Michaella Chung and postdoctoral scholar David Dralle, from UC Berkeley, visited the NIMBUS lab in March 2016 to be trained in the operations and maintenance of the UAS system. 6. PhD student John-Paul Ore from UNL has developed automated testing techniques to identify unit mismatches that can lead to failures in automated robot systems. He also trained the researchers from Berkeley on UAS and water sensing systems. He will be defending his PhD in 2018. 7. PhD student Ajay Shankar from UNL assisted with the KU field campaign. 8. MS student Evan Beachly from UNL has developed user interfaces related to water sampling and prescribed fire and will soon defend his thesis. 9. MS student James Higgins from UNL successfully defended his MS thesis on obtaining sub-surface water samples in 2016. 10. MS student Willie Wells from UNL successfully defended his MS thesis performance of radio and GPS systems as part of his thesis in 2016. 11. Training of all project personnel (including water science graduate students) in the FAA UAS flight operations. 12. In addition to direct mentoring by the supervising PI, all of these students also had the opportunity to work with each other and the other PIs. This project involves researchers from Computer Science and Engineering, School of Natural Resources, School of Journalism, and Civil and Environmental Engineering so these interactions have provided significant training and development for work in interdisciplinary settings. 13. Students have attended and presented work at conferences including, Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting, International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, International Conference on Robotics and Automation, and others. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have disseminated our work to the following communities of interest: 1. Robotic Scientists: The techniques we are developing to synthesize adaptive autonomy systems and improve the safety of operating UAVs close to environments with co-user operators is applicable to many robot systems. We have disseminated the results of our work through publications, posters, and talks (see Target Audience and Products section of this reports for details). 2. Aquatic Scientists: Scientists studying water are one of the primary target audiences for the system we are developing. We have disseminated our work to this community by publishing papers and presenting posters at relevant venues. In addition, the Aquatic Science Co-PIs have widely discussed this work with colleagues and collaborators to more informally disseminate this work. 3. Non-Aquatic Scientist End Users: In the first year of this work we have also identified a number of other communities that can benefit from this research, including farmers and ranchers who are facing greater regulations on the environmental impact of their operations and agencies working to mitigate invasive species problems. We have disseminated our work to these groups by giving both formal and informal talks and demonstrations to these groups. 4. Government Agencies and Policy Makers: This group is very concerned about the use of "drones," but is relatively unaware of the potential benefits of UAVs operating close to the environment to aid in environmental monitoring and management. We have disseminated our work to these groups by meeting with state advisory boards and giving talks and demonstrations to policy makers. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Monitoring and predicting water quality poses a significant challenge since sources of fresh water and contaminants come in from huge areas of land and waterways. Further, the source of pollution can change quickly during and after rainfall events. Characterizing large-scale and quickly changing water systems remains a critical bottleneck that inhibits understanding of transport processes and the development of effective management plans to address water quality issues. In this work, we developed an aerial water sampler and sensing system through an iterative design process that involved both engineers and water scientists. To ensure robustness in field deployments, we developed autonomy and safety systems and automated program analysis tools. The aerial water sampler and sensing system has been deployed in hundreds of sampling missions in Nebraska, Kansas, and California. Of particular note is that the system has been developed to the point that it can be used by scientists without the oversight of the engineers. We have compared the system to traditional sampling and sensing techniques and have determined that the system does not bias samples and is as fast or faster than manual sampling. Below is a list of the specific objectives of this work and the results of this project. Objective 1 Accomplishments: 1. We developed the prototype aerial water sampler and have evaluated it in our target test sites in Nebraska, Kansas, and California, performing well over 1000 sampling and sensing missions. 2. We developed robust height control systems that can maintain the height over water even in winds of up 15mph. 3. We added in-situ sensors (e.g. conductivity and temperature) to the UAV that can be used to determine when to collect water samples. 4. We performed 3D transects of bodies of water collecting conductivity and temperature readings. 5. We developed and demonstrated the capabilities to obtain sub-surface water samples with the UAV and a small standalone sub-surface sampler that can be dropped from a UAV. 6. We developed control algorithms to enable precise sampling and sensing at up to 8m depth with an error of 10cm. Objective 2 Accomplishments: 1. We developed automated techniques to identify and recommend changes when parameters in the system are misconfigured in a configuration file containing hundreds of entries. 2. We developed automated techniques automatically determine how changes in sensor rates or other message rates will propagate throughout the robot system and what impacts this will have. 3. We developed automated techniques to determine if programmers of autonomous systems are misusing units (e.g. assigning an angle measurement to a variable that should be a distance measurement). Objective 3 Accomplishments: 1. We evaluated the performance of our wireless power transfer system through a variety of materials and have found that non-ferrous materials have little impact on the performance of the power transfer systems. This finding means that we can charge sensors housed in plastic, even if they are slightly underwater. 2. We developed a localization system that allows the aerial power transfer robot to localize the sensor it is charging by sensing the magnetic field. This allows us to localize the sensor with minimal additional equipment on the aerial robot, allowing more payload for batteries. 3. We implemented a visual localization system and compared it to the magnetic field sensing system and found that the approach is approximately 10% faster, but also requires a visual tag on the sensor. 4. We developed algorithms that optimizes the charging of sensor nodes based on the flight constraints of the UAV and the power needs of the network. Objective 4 Accomplishments: 1. The UC Berkeley Co-PIs conducted numerous field trials with the UAV system without the robotic developers. This is a major milestone that demonstrates the robotics technology can be used by scientists without direct supervision by robotics developers. 2. Integrated the UAV system with the Eel River Critical Zone Observatory, so that a team of fish biologists and aquatic ecologists as well as hydrodynamic researchers have been engaged with the observation efforts. 3. We conducted joint experiments with Dr. Burgin's group (Co-PI) at the University of Kansas and Dr. Detweiler's group (PI) at a field station in Kansas. Over 70 flights were conducted to collect conductivity, temperature, and water samples both in nine 10,000L tanks with varying controlled conditions and in a natural lake. 4. We have performed experiments at a lake in Nebraska infested with Zebra Mussels to evaluate the ability to detect these with the aerial water sampler and have determined that it is possible detect the veligers. 5. These and other experiments verify that the samples collected by the UAV match those from traditional grab samples and from measurements collected by static sensor arrays. Further, we demonstrated that the speed of data collection can be increased as compared to manual data collection. Objective 5 Accomplishments: 1. We have presented posters and published papers in a number of scientific venues to disseminate our results to the scientific community. See products section of the report for specifics. 2. We have presented our work at a variety of public venues and targeted venues, for instance extension meetings, pest management meetings, invasive species meetings, and others. See products and target audience section of the report for additional details. Of particular note is a booth (as part of a larger USDA-NIFA area) at the 2016 USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington DC, April 15-17. 3. This research has been integrated into CS and CE courses to give concrete real problems for students to work on. In addition, we demonstrated the operation of the system to students collecting water samples in the UNL General Ecology course.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
D. Anthony, and D. Detweiler. (2017), UAV Localization in Row Crops. J. Field Robotics, 34:
1275-1296. doi:10.1002/rob.21706.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
J.-P. Ore, C. Detweiler, and S. Elbaum. Lightweight Detection of Physical Unit Inconsistencies without Program Annotations. In Proceedings of the 2017 International Symposium on Software Testing and
Analysis (ISSTA), Santa Barbara, CA, 2017
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
N. Sharma, S. Elbaum, and C. Detweiler. Rate Impact Analysis in Robotic Systems. In Proceedings
of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Singapore, 2017.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
J.-P. Ore, and C. Detweiler. Sensing Water Properties at Precise Depths from the Air. In Proceedings
of International Conference on Field and Service Robotics, Zurich, Switzerland, 2017.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
J.-P. Ore, C. Detweiler, and S. Elbaum. Dimensional Inconsistencies in Code and ROS Messages: a
Study of 5.9M Lines of Code. In Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent
Robotics and Systems (IROS), Vancouver, Canada, 2017.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
N. Najeeb and C. Detweiler. Extending Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Network Life without Full
Knowledge. Sensors. 2017; 17(7):1642.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
K. Song, A. Brewer, S. Ahmadian, A. Shankar, C. Detweiler, and A. Burgin. Using Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles (UAVs) to sample aquatic ecosystems. Limnology & Oceanography: Methods, accepted to
appear, 2017.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
J.-P. Ore, C. Detweiler, and S. Elbaum. Phriky-Units: a Lightweight, Annotation-Free Physical Unit Inconsistency Detection Tool. In Proceedings of the 2017 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA) - Demonstration Track, Santa Barbara, CA, 2017.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Chung, M., D. Dralle, G. Greer, J-P. Ore, J. Higgins, C. Detweiler, and S.E. Thompson, Advantages
and challenges of measuring stream temperatures with an unmanned aerial system, under review at
Ecohydrology.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Chung, M, D. Dralle, and S.E. Thompson, Small UAS-based thermal infrared sensing for cold water
zone detection in streams, in prep.
|
Progress 09/01/15 to 08/31/16
Outputs
Target Audience: Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?1. PhD student Michaella Chung and postdoctoral scholar David Dralle, from UC Berkeley, visited the NIMBUS lab in March 2016 to be trained in the operations and maintenance of the UAS system. 2. Michaella Chung and David have subsequently conducted two successful field campaigns at the Eel River CZO to evaluate the thermal structure of the main stem of this river using the UAS system. The results will be compared to observations from an in situ grid of thermistors installed by PhD student George Greer. 3. Michaella Chung defended her thesis proposal in Spring 2016. She has commenced work linking the thermal observations that can be made from the UAS to modeled output for a groundwater-surface water interacting system. The aim of the modeling is to compare the magnitude of thermal signals observable within a stream environment to the observational capacity of the UAS system. The work will offer insights into the conditions in which importantly thermal signals, such as those generated by cold groundwater inflows into a warm main stem, can be detected robustly by the UAS. 4. Postdoc Keunyea Song from University of Kansas, has been supported since January 2016 on the grant. Aided in designing and implementing the field test at KU, and is responsible for analyzing the data and drafting the manuscript 5. At KU two under graduates (Austin Brewer and Shawyan Ahmadian) assisted with developing the field plan and collecting the data for the joint experiments at KU. 6. MS student James Higgins from UNL successfully defended his MS thesis on obtaining sub-surfac water samples. 7. MS student Willie Wells from UNL has characterized the performance of radio and GPS systems as part of his thesis. 8. MS student Evan Beachly from UNL has developed user interfaces related to water sampling and prescribed fire. 9. PhD student John-Paul Ore from UNL has developed automated testing techniques to identify unit mismatches that can lead to failures in automated robot systems. He also trained the researchers from Berkeley on UAS and water sensing systems. 10. PhD student Ajay Shankar from UNL assisted with the KU field campaign. 11. Training of all project personnel (including water science graduate students) in the FAA Ground SchoolExam to enable flight tests at our COA location. 12. In addition to direct mentoring by the supervising PI, all of these students also had the opportunityto work with each other and the other PIs. This project involves researchers from Computer Science and Engineering, School of Natural Resources, School of Journalism, and Civil and Environmental Engineering so these interactions have provided significant training and development for work in interdisciplinary settings. 13. Students have attended and presented work at conferences including, Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting, International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, International Conference on Robotics and Automation, and others. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have disseminated our work to the following communities of interest: 1. Robotic Scientists: The techniques we are developing to synthesize adaptive autonomy systems andimprove the safety of operating UAVs close to environments with co-user operators is applicable to many robot systems. We have disseminated the results of our work through publications, posters, and talks (see Target Audience and Products section of this reports for details). 2. Aquatic Scientists: Scientists studying water are one of the primary target audiences for the system we are developing. We have disseminated our work to this community by publishing papers and presenting posters at relevant venues. In addition, the Aquatic Science Co-PIs have widely discussed this work with colleagues and collaborators to more informally disseminate this work. 3. Non-Aquatic Scientist End Users: In the first year of this work we have also identified a number of other communities that can benefit from this research, including farmers and ranchers who are facing greater regulations on the environmental impact of their operations and agencies working to mitigate invasive species problems. We have disseminated our work to these groups by giving both formal and informal talks and demonstrations to these groups. 4. Government Agencies and Policy Makers: This group is very concerned about the use of "drones," but is relatively unaware of the potential benefits of UAVs operating close to the environment to aid in environmental monitoring and management. We have disseminated our work to these groups bymeeting with state advisory boards and giving talks and demonstrations to policy makers. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Objective 1 Accomplishments: 1. We have developed the prototype aerial water sampler and have evaluated it in our target test sites in Nebraska, Kansas, and California, performing well over 1000 sampling and sensing missions. 2. We have developed robust height control systems that can maintain the height over water even in winds of up 15mph. 3. We have added in-situ sensors (e.g. conductivity and temperature) to the UAV that can be used to determine when to collect water samples. 4. We have performed 3D transects of bodies of water collecting conductivity and temperature readings. 5. We have developed and demonstrated the capabilities to obtain sub-surface water samples with theUAV and a small standalone sub-surface sampler that can be dropped from a UAV. Objective 2 Accomplishments: 1. We have developed automated techniques to identify and recommend changes when parameters in the system are misconfigured in a configuration file containing hundreds of entries. 2. We have developed automated techniques automatically determine how changes in sensor rates or other message rates will propagate throughout the robot system and what impacts this will have. 3. We have developed automated techniques to determine if programmers of autonomous systems are misusing units (e.g. assigning an angle measurement to a variable that should be a distance measurement). Objective 3 Accomplishments: 1. We have evaluated the performance of our wireless power transfer system through a variety of materialsand have found that non-ferrous materials have little impact on the performance of the power transfer systems. This finding means that we can charge sensors housed in plastic, even if they are slightly underwater. This will change the actions of scientists deploying sensors, since they can embed sensors in materials without needing to replace them regularly as the batteries die. 2. We developed a localization system that allows the aerial power transfer robot to localize the sensor it is charging by sensing the magnetic field. This allows us to localize the sensor with minimal additional equipment on the aerial robot, allowing more payload for batteries. 3. We have implemented a visual localization system and compared it to the magnetic field sensing system and found that the approach is approximately 10% faster, but also requires a visual tag on the sensor. Objective 4 Accomplishments: 1. We have performed experiments that verify that the samples collected by the UAV match those fromtraditional grab samples and from measurements collected by static sensor arrays. 2. We are undertaking a study of the thermally contrasting stream confluences at the Eel River Critical Zone Observatory in California as an application of these thermal sensing methods. This is being conducted with Dr. Thompson's group (Co-PI) at UC Berkeley with a UAV and thermal probe developed at UNL. This is a major milestone that demonstrates the robotics technology can be usedby scientists without direct supervision by robotics developers. 3. We conducted joint experiments with Dr. Burgin's group (Co-PI) at the University of Kansas andDr. Detweiler's group (PI) at a field station in Kansas. Over 70 flights were conducted to collect conductivity, temperature, and water samples both in nine 10,000L tanks with varying controlledconditions and in a natural lake. Data analysis is underway to compare these measurements to staticallydeployed sensors and hand measurements. 4. We have performed followup experiments at a lake in Nebraska infested with Zebra Mussels to evaluatethe ability to detect these with the aerial water sampler and have determined that it is possible detectthe veligers. 5. We obtained Certificate of Waiver or Authorizations (COA) from the FAA to conduct flights. 6. The graduate researchers at UNL and at UC Berkeley have undertaken FAA flight training to allowUAS operation. Objective 5 Accomplishments: 1. We have presented posters and published papers in a number of scientific venues to disseminate our results to the scientific community. See products section of the report for specifics. 2. We have presented our work at a variety of public venues and targeted venues, for instance extension meetings, pest management meetings, invasive species meetings, and others. See products and target audience section of the report for additional details. Of particular note is a booth (as part of a larger USDA-NIFA area) at the 2016 USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington DC, April 15-17. 3. This research has been integrated into CS and CE courses to give concrete real problems for students to work on. In addition, we demonstrated the operation of the system to students collecting water samples in the UNL General Ecology course.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
D. Twidwell, C. Allen, C. Detweiler, J. Higgins, C. Laney, and S. Elbaum. Smokey Comes of Age:
Unmanned Aerial Systems for Fire Management. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 14(6):
333-339, 2016.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
C. Detweiler, H. Jiang, and S. Elbaum. Inferring and Monitoring Invariants in Robotic Systems.
Autonomous Robots, 1-20, 2016.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
E. Beachly, J. Higgins, C. Laney, S. Elbaum, C. Detweiler, C. Allen, and D. Twidwell. A micro-UAS
to Start Prescribed Fires. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics
(ISER), Tokyo, Japan, 2016.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
A. Taylor, S. Elbaum, and C. Detweiler. Co-Diagnosing Configuration Failures in Co-Robotic Systems.
In Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Systems (IROS),
Daejeon, Korea, 2016.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
J. Higgins and C. Detweiler. The Waterbug Sub-Surface Sampler: Design, Control and Analysis.
In Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Systems (IROS),
Daejeon, Korea, 2016.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
M. Chung, C. Detweiler, M. Hamilton, J. Higgins, J.-P. Ore, and S. Thompson. Obtaining the Thermal
Structure of Lakes from the Air. Journal Water, 7, 6467-6482, 2015.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Thompson, S.E., M. Chung, C. Detweiler and J.-P. Ore, "An Airborne Robotic Platform for Mapping Thermal Structure in Surface Water Bodies (Invited)," American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting,
December 2015, San Francisco, CA, Abstract IN33C-1811, Earth and Space Science Info.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Demonstration Booth with USDA-NIFA at the 2016 USA Science and Engineering Festival, Washington DC, April 15-17, 2016
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
California Academy of Sciences Invited Speaker at workshop entitled: Eyes on the Environment- Drones
for Conservation, talk entitled: Robots, remote sensing, and running around in rural India to solve the
mystery of the disappearing Arkavathy River, 2015.
|
Progress 09/01/14 to 08/31/15
Outputs
Target Audience:The primary target audiences of this work are aquatic scientists and K-16 students. Secondary audiences include other scientists and the general public. We have given talks and poster presentations at a number of scientific meetings to disseminate and obtain feedback on our work (see the products section of this report for additional publications). We have also engaged in activities and talks to ensure that our work reaches possible non-aquatic scientist end users of our system, including talks to the Nebraska Surface Water Monitoring Council, Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, and members of the Nebraska Natural Resource Distract. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In the two years this project has provided training and professional development for 5 undergraduate andgraduate students, specifically: 1. Leveraging this grant, PhD student Michaella Chung from UC Berkeley wrote a successful NSF GRF proposal, allowing her to greatly expand her work related to this project beyond the 1 year budgeted initially. Her contribution is not included in the FTE table, but she worked 0.5FTE on this. 2. Leveraging this grant, MS student James Higgins from UNL wrote a proposal for and received funding from the Robert B. Daugherty Water For Food Institute, allowing him to work on this project. His contribution is not included in the FTE table, but he worked 0.5FTE on this. 3. Three M.S. theses produced that are related to this project, one continuing on with Ph.D. 4. Training of all project personnel (including water science graduate students) in the FAA Ground School Exam to enable flight tests at our COA location. 5. In addition to direct mentoring by the supervising PI, all of these students also had the opportunity to work with each other and the other PIs. This project involves researchers from Computer Science and Engineering, School of Natural Resources, School of Journalism, and Civil and Environmental Engineering so these interactions have provided significant training and development for work in interdisciplinary settings. 6. Students have attended and presented work at conferences including, Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting, International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, International Conference on Robotics and Automation, and others. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have disseminated our work to the following communities of interest: 1. Robotic Scientists: The techniques we are developing to synthesize adaptive autonomy systems and improve the safety of operating UAVs close to environments with co-user operators is applicable to many robot systems. We have disseminated the results of our work through publications, posters, and talks (see Target Audience and Products section of this reports for details). 2. Aquatic Scientists: Scientists studying water are one of the primary target audiences for the system we are developing. We have disseminated our work to this community by publishing papers and presenting posters at relevant venues. In addition, the Aquatic Science Co-PIs have widely discussed this work with colleagues and collaborators to more informally disseminate this work. 3. Non-Aquatic Scientist End Users: In the first year of this work we have also identified a number of other communities that can benefit from this research, including farmers and ranchers who are facing greater regulations on the environmental impact of their operations and agencies working to mitigate invasive species problems. We have disseminated our work to these groups by giving both formal and informal talks and demonstrations to these groups. 4. Government Agencies and Policy Makers: This group is very concerned about the use of "drones," but is relatively unaware of the potential benefits of UAVs operating close to the environment to aid in environmental monitoring and management. We have disseminated our work to these groups by meeting with state advisory boards and giving talks and demonstrations to policy makers. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Two of the PIs have been on family leave during the course of this grant and one is switching to a different university, but continuing work on this project through a sub-contract. This has delayed some progress on our field experiments with water scientists and we will likely request a no-cost extension to complete the proposed work as planned.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Monitoring and predicting water quality poses a significant challenge since sources of fresh water and contaminants come in from huge areas of land and waterways. Further, the source of pollution can change quickly during and after rainfall events. Characterizing large-scale and quickly changing water systems remains a critical bottleneck that inhibits understanding of transport processes and the development of effective management plans to address water quality issues. In this work, we are developing an aerial water sampler and the associated autonomy and safety systems to enable rapid collection of small water samples from hard to access locations. Obtaining more samples over larger areas will lead to a dramatic increase in the understanding of critical water resources and change the actions of water scientists and managers. In this project we have developed the prototype sampler and evaluated it at test sites in Nebraska and California in hundreds of sampling missions. The development of the capability to precisely and safely fly over water has resulted in a change of knowledge for UAV users who previously could not fly over water with this precision. There have been a number of followup efforts with related systems that cite our original research. ?We have compared the system to traditional sampling techniques and have determined that the sampling approach does not bias the water samples for most chemical properties. Further, with the aerial water sampler, we can collect water samples an order of magnitude faster and with significantly lower labor costs than traditional sampling approaches. We are currently evaluating the ability to use the aerial water sampler to obtain eDNA information and to detect and track invasive species. Below is a list of the specific objectives of this work and current status of these activities: Objective 1 Accomplishments: 1. We have developed the prototype aerial water sampler and have evaluated it in our target test sites in Nebraska and California, performing over 500 sampling missions. 2. We have developed robust height control systems that can maintain the height over water even in winds of up 15mph. 3. We have developed the capabilities to obtain sub-surface water samples. 4. We have added in-situ sensors (e.g. salinity and temperature) to the UAV. 5. We have performed 3D transects of bodies of water. Objective 2 Accomplishments: 1. We have extended, refined, and evaluated techniques for automatic invariant generation and monitoring to improve the reliability of robotic systems in the presence of unexpected contexts. This has led to new knowledge in the robotics community about how to analyze these complex robot systems in real-world environments. 2. We have developed a risk analysis approach that develops a measure of risk based on system parameters, environmental conditions, and the capabilities of the operator. We are further developing this to adapt the set of actions available to the user based on the risk level. 3. We have developed automated techniques to identify and recommend changes when parameters in the system are misconfigured in a configuration file containing hundreds of entries. Objective 3 Accomplishments: 1. We have evaluated the performance of our wireless power transfer system through a variety of materials and have found that non-ferrous materials have little impact on the performance of the power transfer systems. This finding means that we can charge sensors housed in plastic, even if they are slightly underwater. This will change the actions of scientists deploying sensors, since they can embed sensors in materials without needing to replace them regularly as the batteries die. 2. We developed a localization system that allows the aerial power transfer robot to localize the sensor it is charging by sensing the magnetic field. This allows us to localize the sensor with minimal additional equipment on the aerial robot, allowing more payload for batteries. 3. The altitude system used on the aerial water sampler allow us to safely get within 2 feet of the water, even with winds of nearly 15 mph. This is close to the distance needed to enable efficient power transfer. Objective 4 Accomplishments: 1. We have performed experiments that verify that the samples collected by the UAV match those from traditional grab samples and from measurements collected by static sensor arrays. 2. We performed a study measuring the temperature throughout the water volume using the UAV. 3. We have undertaken methods development for eDNA at BORR (focusing on protocols for identification of two key amphibian diseases, Riberoia and the "Chytrid" fungus, and teaming these protocols with in-situ measurements made by a biological team from CU Boulder). We will use these methods to assess the feasibility of water sampling via UAS for eDNA methods in the coming year (by pairing comparisons of samples made by UAS with samples made manually). 4. We are undertaking initial site investigations of thermally contrasting stream confluences at the Eel River Critical Zone Observatory as an application of these thermal sensing methods. 5. We have performed preliminary experiments at a lake infested with Zebra Mussels to evaluate the ability to detect these with the aerial water sampler. 6. We have performed tests in both Nebraska and California to evaluate the system in different environments. 7. We obtained Certificate of Waiver or Authorizations (COA) from the FAA to conduct flights. 8. The graduate researchers at UNL and at UC Berkeley have undertaken FAA flight training to allow UAS operation. Objective 5 Accomplishments: 1. We have presented posters and published papers in a number of scientific venues to disseminate our results to the scientific community. See products section of the report for specifics. 2. We have presented our work at a variety of public venues and targeted venues, for instance extension meetings, pest management meetings, invasive species meetings, and others. See products and target audience section of the report for additional details. 3. We have been documenting and videoing our experiments, results, and have conducted interviews with researchers and scientists to document the evolution of the project. We have released some segments, but these will also be part of a larger composition later in the project. 4. This research has been integrated into CS and CE courses to give concrete real problems for students to work on. In addition, we demonstrated the operation of the system to students collecting water samples in the UNL General Ecology course.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
C. Detweiler, J.-P. Ore, D. Anthony, S. Elbaum, A. Burgin, A. Lorenz. ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEWS
AND CASE STUDIES: Bringing Unmanned Aerial Systems Closer to the Environment. Cambridge
Journal of Environmental Practice, 17, pp 188-200, 2015.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
J.-P. Ore, S. Elbaum, A. Burgin, and C. Detweiler. Autonomous Aerial Water Sampling. Journal of
Field Robotics, 2015.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
E. Basha, M. Eiskamp, J. Johnson, and C. Detweiler. UAV Recharging Opportunities and Policies for
Sensor Networks. International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, vol. 2015, Article ID 824260,
10 pages, 2015.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
D. Anthony, E. Basha, J. Ostdiek, J.-P Ore, and C. Detweiler. Surface Classification for Sensor
Deployment from UAV Landings. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation (ICRA), Seattle, Washington, 2015.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
J. Palmer, N. Yuen�??, J.-P. Ore, C. Detweiler, and E. Basha. On Air-to-Water Radio Communication
between UAVs and Water Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on
Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Seattle, Washington, 2015.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
E. Basha, N. Yuen, M. O�??Rourke, and C. Detweiler. Analysis of Algorithms for Multi-Modal
Communications in Underwater Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of ACM International Conference
on Underwater Networks & Systems (WUWNet), Rome, Italy, 2014.
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Project Website: http://nimbus.unl.edu/projects/co-aerial-ecologist-robotic-water-sampling-and-sensing-in-the-wild/
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Progress 09/01/13 to 08/31/14
Outputs
Target Audience: The primary target audiences of this work are aquatic scientists and K-16 students. Secondary audiences include other scientists and the general public. During the first year of this work we reached a number of these audiences through the following specific activities: 1. We have given talks and poster presentations at a number of scientific meetings to disseminate and obtain feedback on our work. Here we highlight selected talks and posters that have reached aquatic and other scientists. See the products section of this report for additional publications. (a) M. Hamilton. “Drones, Nodes, and Apps: perspectives and prospects for the next generation of ecological applications using Micro Aerial Vehicles,” Invited Talk at Robotics Science and Systems Workshop on Robotic Monitoring, July 2014, Berkeley, CA. A talk given to scientists working with robot systems for monitoring environments. (b) E.R. Waring, V.A. Schoepfer, A.J. Burgin, J.P. Ore, C. Detweiler and S. Elbaum. “Using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to map sources of groundwater in a saline wetland.” Poster Presentation at Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting, June 2014, Portland, OR. A poster presentation with significant positive feedback at one of the major meetings for aquatic scientists. (c) C. Detweiler. “Repurposing Drones as Aerial Instruments.” Invited Talk at the 2013 Transatlantic Global Food & Water Science and Security Conference, October, 2013, Lincoln, NE, October 2013. This conference was attended by both scientists, industry representatives, and diplomats from over a dozen countries. 2. We have also engaged in activities and talks to ensure that our work reaches possible non-aquatic scientist end users of our system, including: (a) C. Detweiler. “Bringing Aerial Robots Closer to the Water: Sensing, Sampling, and Safety,” Invited Talk at Argonne National Lab’s Workshop on Applications of UAS to Land and Natural Resource Management, July 2014, Argonne, IL. Meeting involved officials from the EPA, FWS, NASA, NOAA, USFS, and others to discuss uses and advances in UAS. (b) J.P. Ore. “Co-Aerial-Ecologist: Robotic Water Sampling and Sensing in the Wild.” Nature Conservancy Technology Group Meeting. April, 2014, Nebraska City, NE. Poster and presentation to the Nature Conservancy regarding potential uses of UAV for monitoring water and other resources and wildlife in hard to access locations. (c) C. Detweiler. “Using UAVs to aid Integrated Pest Management,” Invited Talk at NCERA 222 Integrated Pest Management Coordination Committee Meeting. March 2014, Madison, WI. Presentation to the regional IPM committee discussing the use of low flying UAVs to aid in detection and treatment of pests. (d) M. Waite. “Beyond Drone Law,” National Press Club. July 2014, Washington DC. Presentation to group of journalists interested in using UAVs for news reporting. (e) C. Detweiler. “UAVs for Invasive Species Detection,” Invited Talk at Nebraska Invasive Species Avisory Council Meeting, March 2014, Lincoln, NE. Presentation to the state advisory board that manages invasive species with a focus on using the aerial water sampler to collect water samples for eDNA analysis. (f) S. Thompson and C. Detweiler. Meeting with the California Nature Conservancy to discuss applications of UAVs and aerial water sampling to their conservation efforts. November, 2013, Berkeley, CA. 3. We have also engaged in extension efforts in Nebraska, even though this was not part of our proposed work, to ensure to make aware and educated about the future use of UAV systems for tasks beyond imaging: (a) S. Elbaum and D. Anthony, “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Research at University of Nebraska-Lincoln” Nebraska Agricultural Technologies Conference 2014, February 2014, Grand Island, NE. (b) C. Detweiler and S. Elbaum. “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Research at University of Nebraska-Lincoln” Demonstration at Eureka UNL Extension Conference. March, 2014, Lincoln, NE. 4. We have also performed a number of educational activities to reach K-16 students. A selection of these activities include: (a) Giving a tour and demos of the robotics research lab to a Girl Scouts troop in July, 2014. Highlights of this tour included a lab demonstration of the water sampler system and allowing these young girls to fly UAVs in our cage test environment. (b) Teaching a week long summer course in June, 2014 on LEGO Robotics course for 6-8th grade students with the Lincoln, NE non-profit Bright Lights. The research in this project was presented as motivation for the challenges we were addressing throughout this class. (c) Giving a tour and demos of the robotics research lab to a 4H middle school group in June, 2014. (d) Giving a tour of the aquatic ecology lab at UNL to a group of middle school students and discussing careers in science and the impact of technology, such as the aerial water sampler, on science. April 2014. (e) Demonstrating, in October 2013, the aerial water sampler to a class of 30 students in General Ecology during their water sampling lab where they were learning about traditional techniques for water collection. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? In the first year this project has provided training and professional development for 4 undergraduate and 4 graduate students, specifically: 1. Partially supported 3 graduate students in the UNL CSE department. 2. Three M.S. theses produced that are related to this project, one continuing on with Ph.D. 3. Partially supported 2 undergraduates in the UNL School of Natural Resources. 4. Partially supported 2 undergraduates in the UNL Journalism department. 5. One graduate student from UC Berkeley, although not yet supported on this grant, was involved in meetings to discuss this project. 6. Training of all project personnel in the FAA Ground School Exam to enable flight tests at our COA location. 7. Held a UAV training meeting at the hydrologic lab at UC Berkeley. 8. In addition to direct mentoring by the supervising PI, all of these students also had the opportunity to work with each other and the other PIs. This project involves researchers from Computer Science and Engineering, School of Natural Resources, School of Journalism, and Civil and Environmental Engineering so these interactions have provided significant training and development for work in interdisciplinary settings. 9. For professional development and dissemination of this work, one CSE graduate student attended and presented a paper at the 2013 International Conference on Field and Service Robotics, attended the 2014 Summer School on Cyber-Physical Systems, and presented a poster at the 2014 Robotics Science and Systems Workshop on Robotic Monitoring. 10. For professional development and dissemination of this work, one CSE graduate student attended the 2014 International Symposium on Experimental Robotics. 11. For professional development and dissemination of this work, one School of Natural Resources undergraduate attended the 2014 Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? We have disseminated our work to the following communities of interest: 1. Robotic Scientists: The techniques we are developing to synthesize adaptive autonomy systems and improve the safety of operating UAVs close to environments with co-user operators is applicable to many robot systems. We have disseminated the results of our work through publications, posters, and talks (see Target Audience and Products section of this reports for details). 2. Aquatic Scientists: Scientists studying water are one of the primary target audiences for the system we are developing. As discussed in the Target Audience section, we have disseminated our work to this community by presenting a poster at one of the primary meetings for these scientists. In addition, the Aquatic Science Co-PIs have widely discussed this work with colleagues and collaborators to more informally disseminate this work. 3. Non-Aquatic Scientist End Users: In the first year of this work we have also identified a number of other communities that can benefit from this research, including farmers and ranchers who are facing greater regulations on the environmental impact of their operations and agencies working to mitigate invasive species problems. We have disseminated our work to these groups by giving both formal and informal talks and demonstrations to these groups (see details in Target Audience section). 4. Government Agencies and Policy Makers: This group is very concerned about the use of “drones,” but is relatively unaware of the potential benefits of UAVs operating close to the environment to aid in environmental monitoring and management. We have disseminated our work to these groups by meeting with state advisory boards and giving talks and demonstrations to policy makers. See Target Audience section for additional details of some of these activities. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Below is a list of the specific objectives of this work and our plan for the coming year: Objective 1: Create an aerial water sampling system that will have a dramatic impact in the field of aquatic ecology, reducing costs by an order of magnitude and making it possible to test new hypotheses as sampling and deployment time is reduced by two orders magnitude. Objective 1 Plan: 1. Continue to test the aerial water sampler in the field to further evaluate the types of parameters the system can measure, the cost, and the time savings as compared to traditional approaches. 2. Evaluate and improve the performance of the system with typical and unexpected environmental conditions (e.g. wind or water current). 3. Integrate in situ sensors, such as salinity and temperature, with the vehicle to enable selective sampling based on measured parameters. Objective 2: Develop techniques to synthesize and optimize adaptive autonomy systems that complement engineered ones by adding robustness in the presence of unexpected events, including those caused by environmental conditions and evolving relationships between scientist and robot. We will leverage our expertise in program analysis techniques to address the key challenge of relating the system’s context and autonomy modes to amplify these systems capabilities. Objective 2 Plan: 1. Develop automated techniques to generate and evaluate tests to determine risk and safety. These will assess not only the vehicle and software, but also their relationship to the user and environment. 2. Develop techniques to adapt the autonomy and actions allowable to the user based on the current risk and safety level. 3. Examine how to leverage the expertise of the user co-operator to better detect and determine the cause of minor and major system faults, and mitigate them. Objective 3: Develop a wireless power transfer system that will enable an aerial robot to charge deployed water sensors and retrieve their data. This will leverage our expertise in aerial power transfer systems and will address key algorithmic and systems challenges needed to make it work near and through water, such as how to optimally transfer power with significant relative motions between the water sensor and aerial vehicle. Objective 3 Plan: 1. Develop a water sensor testbed that can be wirelessly charged by the UAV. 2. Evaluate the wireless power transfer performance when using different localization approaches between the UAV and sensor. 3. Evaluate the performance of the wireless power transfer system at different distances above the water sensor. Objective 4: Deploy the system with our team of aquatic ecologists, incrementally incorporating the technical advances and assessing the cost-effectiveness and capabilities of this co-robot system through field studies conducted in watersheds and lakes in Nebraska and California. Objective 4 Plan: 1. If needed (the rules for UAV flights are changing rapidly), obtain additional COAs from the FAA to conduct tests at other test locations. 2. Perform experiments to determine the impact of the water sampler on the perturbation of the water, especially as compared to traditional sampling techniques. 3. Conduct 3-5 major tests in Nebraska with the full team of robotics, water scientist, and journalism researchers present. 4. Conduct 3-5 additional tests in Nebraska with a subset of the researchers. 5. Conduct 1-2 preliminary tests at the California test site to evaluate the applicability and performance of the system in a different environment with different science goals. Objective 5: Educate scientists, students, and the public on the impact of using robotic instruments for science through a series of videos, articles, and courses. Objective 5 Plan: 1. Demonstrate and discuss the aerial water sampling system at a large public event. 2. Continue targeted extension activities to ensure communities of interest are aware of this work and the potential benefits of integrating UAVs into their operations. 3. Create a video and web postings, that are accessible to the general public, on the project and the impacts of technology on science. 4. Continue incorporation of this project with courses taught by the PIs.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Monitoring and predicting water quality poses a significant challenge since sources of fresh water and contaminants come in from huge areas of land and waterways. Further, the source of pollution can change quickly during and after rainfall events. Characterizing large-scale and quickly changing water systems remains a critical bottleneck that inhibits understanding of transport processes and the development of effective management plans to address water quality issues. In this work, we are developing an aerial water sampler and the associated autonomy and safety systems to enable rapid collection of small water samples from hard to access locations. Obtaining more samples over larger areas will lead to a dramatic increase in the understanding of critical water resources and change the actions of water scientists and managers. In the first year of this project we have developed the prototype sampler and evaluated it at test sites in Nebraska and California in over a hundred sampling missions. The development of the capability to precisely and safely fly over water has resulted in a change of knowledge for UAV users who previously could not fly over water with this precision. We have compared the system to traditional sampling techniques and have determined that the sampling approach does not bias the water samples for most chemical properties. Further, with the aerial water sampler, we can collect water samples an order of magnitude faster and with significantly lower labor costs than traditional sampling approaches. We are currently in the process of developing and evaluating the autonomy systems to ensure that non-expert operators can use the system safely in challenging and uncertain environments. Below is a list of the specific objectives of this work and current status of these activities: Objective 1 Accomplishments: 1. We have developed the prototype aerial water sampler and have evaluated it in our target test sites in Nebraska and California, performing over 100 sampling missions. 2. To enable extremely close flight over water we have developed a redundant sensing system that integrates inexpensive and lightweight ultrasonic, pressure, and water contact sensors to enable precise control of the vehicle over water. This has changed the state of knowledge in the robotics community by demonstrating close flight to water is possible and does not require extremely expensive and heavy sensors that would reduce the payload capabilities of the vehicle. Other researchers are now investigating approaches similar to ours after reading our initial publication on this topic. 3. In our experiments we estimate that the sampling time is an order of magnitude faster than traditional boat based methods needed to obtain samples from the middle of water bodies. This is changing the actions of water scientists as this greatly lowers the cost and effort involved in their field work. Objective 2 Accomplishments: 1. We have extended, refined, and evaluated techniques for automatic invariant generation and monitoring to improve the reliability of robotic systems in the presence of unexpected contexts. This has led to new knowledge in the robotics community about how to analyze these complex robot systems in real-world environments. 2. We have evaluated the performance of our system in winds of nearly 15mph and found that we can still successfully collect samples in these windy conditions. 3. We have developed a risk analysis approach that develops a measure of risk based on system parameters, environmental conditions, and the capabilities of the operator. We are further developing this to adapt the set of actions available to the user based on the risk level. Objective 3 Accomplishments: 1. We have evaluated the performance of our wireless power transfer system through a variety of materials and have found that non-ferrous materials have little impact on the performance of the power transfer systems. This finding means that we can charge sensors housed in plastic, even if they are slightly underwater. This will change the actions of scientists deploying sensors, since they can embed sensors in materials without needing to replace them regularly as the batteries die. 2. We developed a localization system that allows the aerial power transfer robot to localize the sensor it is charging by sensing the magnetic field. This allows us to localize the sensor with minimal additional equipment on the aerial robot, allowing more payload for batteries. 3. The altitude system used on the aerial water sampler allow us to safely get within 2 feet of the water, even with winds of nearly 15 mph. This is close to the distance needed to enable efficient power transfer. Objective 4 Accomplishments: 1. We performed experiments to compare the measurements obtained by the aerial water sampler to traditional grab samples. We found that chemical water properties, such as chloride and sulfate, are not impacted by the sampling mechanism and approach. In addition, fast changing properties, such as dissolved oxygen, measured after the aerial water sampler returned were comparable to in situ measurements. However, we found that the temperature varied by up to 2 degrees centigrade. This shows that some measurements must be collected in the field. We are continuing to evaluate this and adding in situ sensors to our aerial sampler vehicle. 2. Developed protocols for evaluating the perturbation of the aquatic environment by the sampler. 3. We obtained a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA) from the FAA to conduct flights at a test site in Nebraska. 4. We have performed over a hundred water sampling experiments outdoors, in addition to hundreds more in our indoor test environment. 5. In these experiments we estimate that the sampling time is reduced by an order of magnitude, greatly reducing costs and enabling new experiments that require many samples over a short time. 6. In the first year, we have focused on test sites in Nebraska, however, we also traveled to California and performed test with the Co-PIs at UC Berkeley to evaluate the performance of the system at their site and their needs. 7. We have worked with our scientist CO-PIs and other scientists to focus our development efforts. To this point we have identified three main improvements that will enable widest adoption of the aerial sampling method: integrating low cost in situ sensors (e.g. temperature and salinity); enabling collection of sub-surface samples; and increasing the number of automated checks to enable safe operation in field environments without the system developers. Objective 5 Accomplishments: 1. We have presented posters and published papers in a number of scientific venues to disseminate our results to the scientific community. See products section of the report for specifics. 2. We have presented our work at a variety of public venues and targeted venues, for instance extension meetings, pest management meetings, invasive species meetings, and others. See products and target audience section of the report for additional details. 3. We have been documenting and videoing our experiments, results, and have conducted interviews with researchers and scientists to document the evolution of the project. We have released some segments, but these will also be part of a larger composition later in the project. 4. This research has been integrated into CS and CE courses to give concrete real problems for students to work on. In addition, we demonstrated the operation of the system to students collecting water samples in the UNL General Ecology course.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
D. Anthony, J.P. Ore, and C. Detweiler. Sensor Installation via UAVs for Environmental Monitoring.
Poster Presentation at Robotics Science and Systems Workshop on Robotic Monitoring, July, 2014,
Berkeley, CA.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
J.P. Ore, A. Burgin, V. Schoepfer, and C. Detweiler. Towards Monitoring Saline Wetlands with Micro
UAVs. Poster Presentation at Robotics Science and Systems Workshop on Robotic Monitoring, July,
2014, Berkeley, CA.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
A. Mittleider, B. Griffin, and C. Detweiler. Experimental Analysis of a UAV-Based Wireless Power
Transfer Localization System. International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER 2014),
Marrakech and Essaouira, Morocco, 2014.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
E.R. Waring, V.A. Schoepfer, A.J. Burgin, J.P. Ore, C. Detweiler and S. Elbaum. Using unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs) to map sources of groundwater in a saline wetland. Poster Presentation at Joint
Aquatic Sciences Meeting, June 2014, Portland, OR.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
J.-P. Ore, S. Elbaum, A. Burgin, B. Zhao, C. Detweiler. Autonomous Aerial Water Sampling.
International Conference on Field and Service Robotics. Brisbane, Australia, 2013.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
C. Detweiler, S. Banerjee, M. Doniec, M. Jiang, F. Peri, R. Chen, and D. Rus. Adaptive Decentralized
Control of Mobile Underwater Sensor Networks and Robots for Modeling Underwater Phenomena.
Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks, 3(2):113-149, 2014.
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
H. Jiang. Invariant Inferring and Monitoring in Robotic Systems. M.S. Thesis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
2014.
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
J.P. Ore. Autonomous Aerial Water Sampling. M.S. Thesis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2014.
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
A. Mittleider. Analysis, Optimization, and Implementation of a UAV-Based Wireless Power Transfer
System. M.S. Thesis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2014.
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
J. Leng. Using a UAV to Effectively Prolong Wireless Sensor Network Lifetime with Wireless Power
Transfer. M.S. Thesis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2014.
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