Robotic mapping and monitoring of data centers

Abstract

We describe an inexpensive autonomous robot capable of navigating previously unseen data centers and monitoring key metrics such as air temperature. The robot provides real-time navigation and sensor data to commercial IBM software, thereby enabling real-time generation of the data center layout, a thermal map and other visualizations of energy dynamics. Once it has mapped a data center, the robot can efficiently monitor it for hot spots and other anomalies using intelligent sampling. We demonstrate the robot's effectiveness via experimental studies from two production data centers.