Objectives and challenges 

The development of Wireless Underground Sensor Networks (WUSNs) is a recent research axis aiming to:

1) offer new perspectives in the autonomous data monitoring for the agricultural and environmental sectors,

2) adapt the behavior of mobile robots moving within the range of the system (e.g. change of the locomotion parameters, actuator control).

The main advantages of these WUSNs are to be based on sensor nodes buried at several tens of centimeters deep, enabling thus to dissimulate and protect them of some potential degradations (bad weather conditions, malicious acts), with the possibility to be installed anywhere, including in the passage of vehicles (e.g. soil moisture measurement in different points of an agricultural parcels). The development of such WUSNs requires however to address key scientific and technological problems, in particular in terms of energy consumption (ideally the system shoud be operational several years without battery replacement), communication range (the propagation of electromagnetic waves are highly attenuated in soil with high variability with respect to the soil moisture and soil composition), but also in terms of autonomous data collection.

In this context, the objective of the projet CIDEA is to develop innovative WUSNs, including the optimal functioning of the system in terms of energy consumption and communication range, combined with optimization of the data collection process by using terrestrial vehicles (mobile robot), aerial vehicles (drones) and spatial approaches (nanosatellites). The data collected are either directly used by the mobile vehicle to adapt its behavior in realtime (e.g. variation of the working speed of a mobile robot, control of an agriculural implement, adaptation of both the altitude and position of a drone), or uploaded in a smart and remote we server.

Publications 2022-2023 

· Buried sensor nodes : 

- Moiroux-Arvis L.; Cariou C.; Chanet J.P. Evaluation of LoRa technology in 433-MHz and 868-MHz for underground to aboveground data transmission. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 2022, Vol. 194, DOI 10.1016/j.compag.2022.106770 

- Cariou C.; Moiroux-Arvis L.; Pinet F.; Chanet J.P. Internet of Underground Things in Agriculture 4.0: Challenges, Applications, Perspectives. Sensors, 2023, 23(8), 4058, DOI 10.3390/s23084058 

· Data collection by drone and optimal trajectory planning:

- Cariou C.; Moiroux-Arvis L.; Pinet F.; Chanet J.P. Data collection from buried sensor nodes by means of an unmanned aerial vehicle. Sensors, 2022, 22(15), 5926, DOI 10.3390/s22155926 

- Cariou C.; Moiroux-Arvis L.; Pinet F.; Chanet J.P. Evolutionary algorithm with geometrical heuristics for solving the Close Enough Traveling Salesman Problem: application to the trajectory planning of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Algorithms, 2023, 16(1), 44, DOI 10.3390/a16010044 

· Mobile robot control :

- Moiroux-Arvis L.; Cariou C.; Pinet F.; Chanet J.P. CIDEA : Robot behavior adaptation from interactive communication with buried sensor nodes. Application to smart agriculture, 8th International Conference on Machine & Guidance (MCG), November 17-18th 2022, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wroclaw, Poland, https://doi.org/10.37190/mcg2022 

- Cariou C.; Moiroux-Arvis L.; Pinet F.; Chanet J.P. Adaptive robot control based on Wireless Underground Sensor Network in Agriculture 4.0, 5th International Conference on Computer Communication and the Internet (ICCCI), June 23-25th 2023, pp. 217-222, Shonan Institute of Technology, Fusijawa, Japan, DOI 10.1109/ICCCI59363.2023.10210173