MAE Seminar: Coordination and Control of Robot Teams

Abstract: A coordinated team of autonomous robots can accomplish tasks often impossible for a single robot. Effective control of these teams often relies on decentralized architectures that allow coordination while minimizing inter-­‐agent information exchange. This talk will present some of our algorithmic and architectural designs to achieve coordinated behaviors in space, air, surface and ground vehicles, as well as some practical challenges in fielding such systems.

Bio: Amir Rahmani is currently with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s robotic section where he leads development of estimation, coordination and control algorithms for a swarm of autonomous vehicles. Prior to joining JPL, he was an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Miami. Rahmani received his doctorate from the University of Washington, Seattle, and had a postdoctoral appointment at Georgia Institute of Technology.