Robust Application - layer Data Exchange Protocols for Networks of Semi - autonomous Vehicles ( RoDeX )

Data integration is the process of building a single view over a collection of data sources. Although well established as a research topic, and supported by some commercial tools, current approaches assume that data exchange between data sources occurs in a standard business environment, with relatively stable data sources and communication channels. In the context of unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAV), reliable data exchange presents a number of challenges. Firstly, there may be the requirement to rapidly integrate a new UAV with different information requirements into an existing network. Secondly, the process of data exchange needs to cope with temporary and/or permanent loss of data sources and communication channels. The RoDeX project deals with these challenges, building upon peer-to-peer (P2P) networking techniques, and the data integration and exchange toolkit. We briefly describe the functionality of the current RoDeX system, and present an example to show how it could be used in one of the demonstration vignettes.