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The General Suppression Control Framework (GSCF) is a framework inspired by the suppression hypothesis of the immune discrimination theory. The framework consists of five distinct components, the Affinity Evaluator, Cell Differentiator, Cell Reactor, Suppression Modulator, and the Local Environment. These reactive components, each responsible for a specific function, can generate long-term and short-term influences to other components by the use of humoral and cellular signals.This paper presents the design and application of a GSCF based distributed wireless sensor network prototyping system for tracking mobile search and rescue robots. The main objective of this physical prototyping system is to demonstrate the possibility of applying advanced Zigbee sensors to form a network that can locate a small group of mobile robots within the wireless sensor network. Another important objective of the prototyping system presented is to identify potential technological constraints in the physical system. Referencing to the result obtained, future research can be formulated and realistic simulation environment can be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An agent-based dynamic routing strategy for a generic automated material handling systems (AMHS) is developed. The strategy employs an agent-based paradigm in which the control points of a network of AMHS components are modelled as cooperating node agents. With the inherent features of route discovery a set of shortest and near-shortest path, an average-flow route selection algorithm is developed to scatter the load of an AMHS. Their performance is investigated through a detailed simulation study. The performance of the proposed dynamic routing strategy is benchmarked with the shortest path algorithm. The results of the simulation experiments are presented and their performance compared under a number of performance indices including the hop count, flow and ability to balance network loading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unprecedented number and scales of natural and human-induced disasters in the past decade has urged the emergency search and rescue community around the world to seek for newer, more effective equipment to enhance their efficiency. Tele-operated robotic search and rescue systems consist of tethered mobile robots that can navigate deep into rubbles to search for victims and to transfer critical on-site data for rescuers to evaluate at a safe spot outside of the disaster affected area has gained the interest of many emergency response institutions. To fully realize the promising characteristics of robotics search and rescue systems, however, mobile robots must first be free from their tether and be granted the ability to navigate autonomously even when wireless control commands from the operator cannot reach them. For search and rescue robots to go autonomous in exceedingly unstructured environment, the control system must be highly adaptive and robust to handle all exceptional situations. This paper introduces the control of a low-cost robotic search and rescue system based on an immuno control framework, GSCF, which was developed under the inspiration of the suppression mechanism of the immune discrimination theory. The robotic system can navigate autonomously into rubbles and to search for living human body heat using its thermal array sensor. Design and development of the physical prototype and the control system are described in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]