Les réseaux véhiculaires sont des systèmes de communication basés sur un échange d'informations de véhicules à infrastructures fixes installées au bord des routes, on parle alors de mode V2I (Vehicle-to-Infrastructure), ou de véhicules à véhicules dit mode V2V (Vehicle-to-Vehicle) ou VANET (Vehicular Ad hoc Network). L'objectif est de fournir aux conducteurs et aux opérateurs de transport des informations sur le trafic routier permettant d'améliorer l'efficacité des systèmes de transport, la sécurité et le confort des usagers. Depuis leur apparition, les VANET ont connu un très grand essor, de nombreux standards, applications et mécanismes de routage ont été proposés pour répondre aux spécificités de cette nouvelle classe de réseaux. Les défis à relever pour leur conception découlent principalement de la forte mobilité des véhicules, de la diversité spatio-temporelle de la densité du trafic et de la propagation des ondes radio en environnement extérieur défavorable à l'établissement des communications sans fil. La difficulté, aussi bien économique que logistique, de la mise en œuvre réelle des réseaux véhiculaires fait de la simulation le moyen le plus largement utilisé pour la conception et l'évaluation des solutions proposées. Cependant la validité des résultats de simulation dépend fortement de la capacité des modèles utilisés à reproduire le plus fidèlement possible les situations réelles. Deux aspects sont essentiellement importants dans les VANET : la mobilité des véhicules et la propagation des ondes radio. Nous proposons dans cette thèse un nouveau modèle de mobilité et un nouveau modèle de propagation d’ondes radio pour réseaux de véhicules en environnement urbain et suburbain. Pour définir des schémas réalistes, ces deux modèles se basent sur des données statiques et dynamiques réelles sur les caractéristiques topographiques et socio-économiques de l'environnement. Ces données décrivent particulièrement la distribution spatio-temporelle des véhicules et les infrastructures présentes dans l'environnement. Trois cas d'études sont présentés dans la thèse pour la validation des modèles développés ; un environnement théorique, urbain ou suburbain, défini par l'utilisateur, notamment le cas Manhattan très utilisé, et deux environnements réels qui représentent des agglomérations de taille moyenne. Une autre contribution de cette thèse est l'étude de la connectivité radio et des performances des protocoles de routage dans les VANET. A partir de graphes dynamiques de connexions représentant la variation des liens radio entre véhicules en déplacement, nous avons analysé et déterminé les propriétés de la topologie des liaisons radio des réseaux véhiculaires. Pour étudier les protocoles de routage, nous avons utilisé le modèle de mobilité et le modèle de propagation radio que nous avons développés en association avec le simulateur de réseaux ns-2. Nous avons comparé les performances des protocoles de routage les plus répandus et déterminé les mécanismes de routage les plus adaptés aux réseaux véhiculaires. / Vehicular networks are communication systems based on information exchange either between vehicles and roadside fixed infrastructure, which is called V2I (Vehicle-to-Infrastructure) mode, or from vehicle to vehicle V2V (Vehicle-to-Vehicle) mode also known as VANET (Vehicular Ad hoc Network). The objective of these networks is to provide drivers and transport authorities the most timely information on road traffic in order to improve the efficiency of transportation systems, users safety and comfort.Since their appearance, the VANET have been greatly developed; many standards, applications and routing mechanisms have been proposed to address the specifics of this new class of networks. The challenges arise mainly from the high vehicles mobility, the spatiotemporal diversity of traffic density and, the radio waves propagation in external environment unfavorable to wireless communications establishment.The difficulty, both economic and logistical, of a real implementation of vehicular networks makes the simulation widely used to conceive and assess the proposed solutions. The validity of simulation results depends strongly on the ability of the models to reproduce as faithfully as possible the real situations. Two aspects are mainly important in the VANET: the simulation of vehicles mobility and radio wave propagation.We propose in this thesis a new mobility model and a new radio propagation model for vehicular networks in urban and suburban environment. To be realistic, these two models are based on real static and dynamic data describing the topographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the environment. These data concern particularly the spatiotemporal vehicles distribution and the description of the infrastructures present in the environment. Three case studies are presented in the thesis to validate the models, a theoretical user-defined urban or suburban environment (the Manhattan case very often used) and two real environments from mean size cities.Another contribution of this thesis is the study of radio connectivity and performance of routing protocols in the VANET. From dynamic graphs representing the variation of the radio links between vehicles in motion, we have analyzed and determined the topology properties of vehicular networks. To study routing protocols, we used the mobility model and the radio propagation model in association with the network simulator ns-2. We have compared the performance of the widespread routing protocols and determined the most adapted routing mechanisms to vehicular networks.

In this thesis, various control problems originating from the field of mobile robotics are considered. In particular, the thesis deals with problems that are related to the interaction and coordination of multiple mobile units. The scientific contributions are presented in five papers that together constitute the main part of the thesis. The papers are preceded by a longer introductory part, in which some important results from control theory, data processing and robotics are reviewed. In the first of the appended papers, two stabilizing tracking controls are proposed for a non-holonomic robot platform of unicycle type. Tolerance to errors and other properties of the controllers are discussed and a reactive obstacle avoidance control, that can easily be incorporated with the proposed tracking controls, is suggested. In Paper B, the results from Paper~A are extended to multi-agent systems. It is demonstrated how the tracking controls from Paper A can be used as building blocks when putting together formations of robots, in which each robot maintains a fixed position relative its neighbors during translation. In addition, switching between the different control functions is shown to be robust, implying that it is possible to change the shape of a formation on-line. In the first two papers, the tracking problem is facilitated by the assumption that the approximate velocity of the target/leader is known to the tracking robot. Paper C treats the the case where the target velocity is neither directly measurable with the available sensor setup, nor possible to obtain through communication with neighboring agents. Straight-forward computation of the target velocity from available sensor data unfortunately tend to enhance measurement errors and give unreliable estimates. To overcome the difficulties, an alternative approach to velocity estimation is proposed, motivated by the local observability of the given control system. Paper D deals with another problematic aspect of data acquisition. When using range sensors, one often obtains a mixed data set with measurements originating from many different sources. This problem would, for instance, be encountered by a robot moving in a formation, where it was surrounded by other agents. There exist established techniques for sorting mixed data sets off-line, but for time-depending systems where data need to be sorted on-line and only small time delays can be tolerated, established methods fail. The solution presented in the paper is a prediction-correction type algorithm, referred to as CCIA (Classification Correction and Identification algorithm). Finally, in Paper E, we consider the problem of maintaining connectivity in a multi-agent system. Often inter-agent communication abilities are associated with some proximity constraints, so when the robots move in relation to each other, communication links both break and form. In the paper we present a framework for analysis that makes it possible to compute a set of general constraints which, if satisfied, are sufficient to guarantee maintained communication for a given multi-agent system. Constraints are computed for two sorts of consensus-based systems and the results are verified in simulations. / QC 20100715