CAREER: Multi-scale Modeling for Mobile, Multi-robot Systems

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

The project focuses on robotic tasks that cannot be done by a single robot, with the goal of developing multi-robot systems with increased fault tolerance and task speedup. This domain will be studied formally, in pursuit of a fundamental theory. The resulting formalism is to guide researchers in the design of experiments with large-scale multi-robot systems. Macroscopic models using expected (rather than exact) values of the system states will be explored in the search of a theory of multi-robot teams. Models of large-scale robot teams will be designed, and testable hypotheses about system performance will be formulated. Scalable algorithms for certain canonical tasks in a planar environment will be designed and tested, using a large group of mobile robots and a multi-robot simulator. The education part of the project is closely tied to the PI's research, and includes a new teaching lab, lab courseware development, and hosting high-school minority summer interns at the lab.