ADVANCE - Fellow

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

In this prepared ADVANCE Fellow award the PI plan to investigate the general area of "networks and control," which can be broken down into two subareas. The first subarea considers the control of communication networks, which falls into the broader field of information technology. The second subarea is networked control systems (NCS), where one or more control loops is closed via a serial communication channel. The focus of this proposal is in the latter subarea. The idea of NCS is to bring multiple-input, multiple-output control system technology to application areas where the prohibitive cost of point-to-point wiring had previously barred its use. The PI has worked for the past five years on research that covers stability, encoding, estimation, perturbation and application issues for NCS. Applications of this research include control and communications of active, intelligent, dynamic networks; distributed sensor systems; secure, reliable wireless communication; and control of multi-vehicle formations. The PI will work with two other robotics professors at UW on a project with the goal of enabling groups of robots to work effectively under unstructured conditions and with close coordination and control by humans. There are many activities where it is desirable to substitute robots for humans ("dull, dirty and/or dangerous" tasks). Teams of robots, operating in an unknown and perhaps hostile environment can potentially accomplish important missions such as surveillance, situation awareness and understanding, damage assessment, search and rescue, and others. However, command and control of such a team requires effective coupling between the human supervisor and the robot teams. Furthermore, the sensory, motor and planning capabilities of the human exceed those of foreseeable autonomous robots. Therefore, an effective combination of the human and robot can potentially produce higher performance than a team composed entirely of humans or entirely of robots. Realizing this vision requires basic advances in research in the fields of mobile robotic sensing planning and control, as well as human interfaces to multiple robots. The PI's work on this project will focus on multi-robot communication and control. The PI is actively involved with community outreach at UW. During the past academic year, the PI has hosted three outreach events. The first was a 3-hour long workshop on mobile robotics for a group of Seattle YMCA teenagers. The second was three hour-long workshops on mobile robotics for teenage girls through the Shoreline Community College "Expanding Your Horizons Day" program. The PI also hosted a two-day open house in the Mobile Robotics Laboratory for the annual EE Department Open House. This past academic year, the PI developed three new senior-level capstone design courses on mobile robotics. The PI plans to improve the courses and teach them again in the upcoming academic year. The PI plans to research the two areas listed above. This will involve working with other professors and students in the UW Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering departments. To meet the ADVANCE goal the PI plans to support a woman graduate student each year. The PI is currently a graduate student mentor in the UW Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) program. The PI will also be an advisor for independent study projects from women in the EE department. The UW EE Department has most of the required infrastructure to support the PI and graduate students to perform the research proposed.