Current Projects

  • CardboardRobot

    Learning to Locomote

    As robots evolve they are becoming increasingly “smarter”, but still can not and do not learn the way humans learn. For example, humans have evolved to move by walking or running; however, humans can learn how to move by other means (e.g. swimming, skateboarding, riding bikes, etc.). I don’t know of any current robot that [...]

  • robot_music_wall

    Spatio-Temporal Routing

      The idea behind this project is to route multiple robots to service spatially distributed requests at specified time instants, while optimizing some criterion, e.g. the total distance travelled. The routing problem is similar to the well known m-TSP or the vehicle routing problem, except that it is temporally constrained in that every request must be met at a [...]

  • reconfiguration_chair_table

    Self-reconfiguring Robots

    The goal of this project is to develop distributed control strategies to automatically reconfigure an ensemble of individual robotic modules from an initial configuration into a desired target configuration. A configuration in our work is a three-dimensional geometric arrangement of cubic modules where a cubic module is the basic building block of our system. Modular [...]

  • Autonomous Marionettes

    Autonomous Marionettes

    The project is divided into three main research tasks: Puppet Choreography with Motion Programs, Imitating Human Motions, and Distributed Protocols for Coordinating Puppets.

  • Assignment Problem

    Assignment and Formation Control

    The primary goal for this research is to develop a method of dynamic role assignment and formation control for multi-robot systems for rotationally and translationally invariant formations. Most previous work has treated assignment and formation synthesis as two separate problems.

  • Adaptive Time Horizon

    Adaptive Time Horizon for MPC

    The typical approach in the receding horizon framework is to choose a fixed time horizon over which to predict the unknown variables and obtain the optimal control input. If we had perfect estimates we could then make the time horizon as large as possible subject to factors such as computation speed, convergence, stability, and satisfaction [...]

  • poses

    Dancing Robots

    Stylistic Task Specification Framework applied to Aldebaran NAO robotic platform Typically, robotic algorithms focus on tasks which have concrete, functional objectives.  Our framework aims to allow for more general specification based on stylistic considerations.  Namely, we may think of the movement styles exhibited by classical ballerinas, disco dancers, and cheerleaders as differentiated by distinct stylistic tasks.  [...]

  • Mobilie Communiction

    Mobile Communication Networks

    Mobile Communication Networks Exploration of complex and dangerous territories posts great challenges for robotics research. Intuition suggests that using cooperative multiple vehicles will increase time efficiency. Coordination of multiple vehicles typically relies on communication between vehicles, but direct communication is easily blocked or at least attenuated by obstacles. Hence one major challenge for a successful [...]

  • Bio Inspired

    Bio-Inspired Systems

    Biologically Inspired Heterogeneous Networks Social behavior of animals can offer solution models for missions involving a large number of heterogeneous vehicles, such as light combat ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, and unmanned underwater vehicles. We draw inspiration from the bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, and develop coordination algorithms for heterogeneous multi-agent systems that are expressive enough to [...]

  • Hybrid

    Hybrid Systems

    Optimal Control of Hybrid Systems Hybrid systems can accurately model a large number of systems in many application domains where traditional non-linear systems can not. Since they are generally not as well understood, the options to control hybrid systems are usually more limited. Recently, there has been an enormous interest to use optimal control for [...]

  • Heterogeneous

    Heterogeneous Networked Robotics

    Resource Allocation in Multi Agent Networks In multi agent systems, the interaction among nodes, provide solutions to complex group level tasks. The scope of service, such systems provide, depends on the distribution of nodes, that are equipped with various resources and facilities. How can we exploit the distribution of facilities among the agents, to increase [...]

  • Networked

    Networked Robotics

    Automatic Deployment of Mobile Robots This is part of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) project. The premise is to use a mobile sensor network of mobile robots to study the effects of climate change on Antarctica. Our aim is to provide high-level control for the mobile sensor network. To this end, we are [...]

  • Leader Follower

    Group-based Leader Follower Control

    The basis of this work is creating application specific leader follower network topologies that are completely controllable. In particular, single leader networks are considered where the input signal is injected at the leader node and the follower nodes execute a nearest neighbor averaging rule. Under this set up, each network topology can be partitioned into [...]

  • Merging

    Merging and Spacing

    Distributed Air Traffic Scheduling During Terminal Approach     Conventional air traffic management (ATM) practices are known to be too rigid to accomodate for the projected increase in air traffic over the next few decades. To address this issue, the FAA’s NextGen iniative aims to introduce a set of technologies that will modernize the national [...]

  • Convoy Protection

    Convoy Protection

    Scalable UAV Ground Convoy Protection     When in a hostile environment, obtaining reliable information about upcoming threats ahead of time could mean the difference between life and death. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which can travel at high velocities and have a large field of vision, are excellent tools for performing such reconaissance missions. Here [...]


Recent News

Philip Twu Graduation

May 2012: Philip Twu has now graduated!

Rahul Chipalkatty Graduation

May 2012: Rahul Chipalkatty has now graduated!

Peter Kingston Graduation

May 2012: Peter Kingston has now graduated!

Dr. Egerstedt made IEEE Fellow

January 2012:  Congratulations to Dr. Egerstedt as he was named as an IEEE Fellow!