Mobile robot deployment in the context of WSN

Abstract

The advances in mobile robotics allow us today to add the mobility concept into many different classes of wireless sensor networks (WSN) or wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSAN) applications. The deployment of mobile sensors is possible and useful in many application scenarios, ranging from the environmental monitoring, e.g., volcano activity, dispersion of fire, pollutants or gas plumes, and public safety applications (event or object surveillance), to the industry (structure and machinery health) and military applications (automated warfare, land mine detection). Manual sensor deployment represents a rather difficult task to achieve in such type of applications due to various reasons that will be discussed in this chapter. The use of mobile agents, i.e., robotic platforms equipped with sensory and motion capabilities, allows us to overcome these difficulties by deploying the sensor network in a random manner and applying the self-repositioning of self-deploying techniques.