Data Driven Learning and Control seminar series is organized by the Information and Decision Science Lab at Cornell University and aims to explore the latest advancements and interdisciplinary approaches to data-driven learning and control systems.
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Interactive Perception in Human-autonomy Teams (HATs)
Mobile multi-robot networks (MRNs) comprised of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and/or unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) have been shown highly capable to fulfill complex collaborative tasks such as entertainment, wildfire monitoring and management, search and rescue, and factory surveillance and automation. Using intelligent coordination and distributed control theories, MRNs can operate autonomously and in the vicinity of human workers or operators, in an effort to reduce task-completion times, communicate mission-relevant data in support of situational awareness, and remove humans from tedious or hazardous tasks. However, developing and deploying MRNs that interact with human teams for perception or other complex tasks remains a daunting technical challenge due to safety consideration, latencies and communication constraints, and, importantly, different sensing and language modalities. This talk describes new challenges, opportunities, and developments in human-autonomy teaming, including the coordination and control of multi-robot networks (CCMRN) for tracking scenarios where the number of humans exceed those of the robots, and robots must not only be able to properly characterize the target/human of interest but also interact with him/her using natural gestures. Additionally, a new facility for AI-supported Real-time Human-Autonomous Systems Collaborations (RealTHASC) is presented to both test and demonstrate HAT capabilities and provide an extended reality paradigm by which humans and robots may some day be able to perceive common goals, tasks, and environments interactively.
Bio: Silvia Ferrari is the John Brancaccio Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. Prior to that, she was professor of engineering and computer science at Duke University, and founder and director of the NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship and Fellowship program on Wireless Intelligent Sensor Networks. Currently, she is the director of the Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Controls at Cornell University and the co-Director of the Cornell-Unibo VÃÂÃÂho Institute on Vehicle Intelligence at Cornell Tech. Her principal research interests include active perception, robust adaptive control, learning, and approximate dynamic programming, and control of multiscale dynamical systems. She is the author of the book “Information-driven Path Planning and Control,” MIT Press (2020), and of the TED talk “Do robots dreams of electric sheep?”. She received the B.S. degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University. She is a Fellow of ASME, a Senior Member of the IEEE and AIAA, and a Member of SPIE and SIAM. She is the recipient of the ONR young investigator award (2004), the NSF CAREER award (2005), and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) award (2006).