The work performed in the SOLOMON project shed light on several aspects of autonomous mobile smart cameras able to interact with their environment including other smart cameras and to deal with rapidly unfolding situations. Specifically, these aspects are (i) the ‘online multi-target k-coverage problem’, (ii) self-organisation to coordinate cameras in a network to achieve shared and individual goals, and (iii) self-awareness of computational systems embodied in physical devices.
First, at the beginning of the SOLOMON project, we proposed a completely novel problem statement, namely the ‘online multi-target k-coverage problem’ [1]. The paper introducing this problem and proposing these initial approaches has been nominated for the best paper award at the International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras, the leading conference on smart camera networks.
We also proposed a novel architecture and investigated self-aware capabilities to be involved in mobile smart camera networks and more specifically in the online multi-object k-coverage problem [2]. In this work decisions on who to invite but also on how to respond to an invitation is based on local information. This increased the network-wide performance even further and showed the benefits and applicability of our novel architecture.
Second, we studied self-organisation in autonomous acting, mobile smart cameras.
We investigated the benefits of self-organising behaviour over decentralised and distributed behaviour in smart camera networks [3]. We took the problem of coverage maximisation and showed that self-organising, iterative techniques can even outperform concurrent, decentralised approaches with respect to coverage maximisation while minimising overlap with other cameras. This work was presented at the International Conference for Self-Adaptive and Self-Organising Systems, where the paper was nominated for the best paper award of the conference. Furthermore, we proposed a novel algorithm to coordinate cameras in a distributed fashion, guaranteeing their self-organisation to achieve the online multi-object k-coverage problem [4]. Finally, we investigated team performance of teams on the online multi-object k-coverage problem [5]. Our results showed the benefit of online affiliation over static or single teams.
Third, we investigated computational self-awareness in physical devices, interacting with the environment and with other systems. We defined levels of networked self-awareness describing the impact of actions in the environment on the system [6, 7]. Another article highlighted the challenges for cyber-physical systems and how computational self-awareness might help to overcome these challenges [8].
In total, the SOLOMON project produced 9 peer review papers accepted to 6 conferences and 3 workshops. These papers have been written together with partners from the SOLOMON project as well as collaborations established by the research fellow during the project runtime. Furthermore, there are 2 conference papers and 3 journal articles currently under review.
[1] “Online Multi-object k-coverage with Mobile Smart Cameras”, Lukas Esterle, Peter R. Lewis. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras, 2017
[2] “An Architecture for Self-Aware IoT Systems”, Lukas Esterle and Bernhard Rinner. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, 2018
[3] “Centralised, Decentralised, and Self-organised Coverage Maximisation in Smart Camera Networks”, Lukas Esterle. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organised Systems, 2017
[4] “CHAINMAIL: Distributed coordination for multi-task k-assignment using autonomous mobile IoT devices”, Lukas Esterle. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Computation in Sensor Systems, 2018
[5] “Goal-aware Team Affiliation in Collectives of Autonomous Robots”, Lukas Esterle. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organised Systems, 2018
[6] “Levels of Networked Self-awareness”, Lukas Esterle and John NA Brown. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organised Systems Workshops, 2018.
[7] “I Think Therefore You Are: Models for Interaction in Collectives of Self-Aware Cyber-physical Systems”, Lukas Esterle and John NA Brown. Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems, under review.
[8] “Self-aware Cyber-Physical Systems”, Kirstie L. Bellman, Nikil Dutt, Lukas Esterle, Andreas Herkersdorf, Axel Jantsch, Christopher Landauer, Peter R. Lewis, Marco Platzner, Nima Taherinejad, and Kalle Tammemäe. Transaction on Cyber-Physical Systems, under review.
