Diversity and Heterogeneity in Multi-Robot Systems

Date
May 10, 2016, 4:30 pm4:30 pm
Location
E-Quad, B205

Speaker

Details

Event Description

Abstract:
Nature demonstrates the benefits of biological diversity with ecosystems that are resilient, adaptable, and productive over long time-spans. In robotics research, we are interested in a principled study of diversity with the aim of building on nature's inventions. In this talk, I shed light on the effects and implications of diversity and heterogeneity in multi-robot systems. I begin by displaying empirical results that stem from a collaborative positioning problem. As the need for foundational approaches becomes evident, my focus shifts to the question of how to formalize diversity. I answer this question in the context of heterogeneous robot swarms, with insights that pertain to the particular aspects of performance and security.
 
Bio:
Amanda Prorok is currently a Postdoc in the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, where she works with Prof. Vijay Kumar on heterogeneous robot swarms. She completed her PhD at EPFL, Switzerland, where she addressed the topic of localization with ultra-wideband sensing for large-scale, collaborative systems. Her dissertation was awarded the Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) award for the best thesis at EPFL in the fields of Computer Sciences, Automatics and Telecommunications.  She was selected as an MIT Rising Star in 2015, and won a Best Paper Award at BICT 2015.