Overview
My work is at the intersection of intelligent
systems, robotics, and software systems research. I have collaborated
with systems and robotics researchers on problems involving
educational robotics, robot teams, sensor networks, energy-aware robot
software systems, and distributed real-time systems. I am an
experimentalist, primarily focusing on system building and empirical
evaluation as a means for validating theoretical hypotheses. I want
to understand the fundamental trade-offs concerning computation,
communication, sensing, mobility, and manipulation in robot systems
architectures. Much of my work has been about managing cost and
complexity in robot systems. Managing cost and complexity is of
paramount importance for both multi-robot systems research and
educational robotics.
IPRE - Institute for
Personal Robots in Education
This project aims to apply and evaluate robotics as a context for
computer science education and is a collaboration between Georgia
Tech, Bryn Mawr College, and Microsoft Research. I have helped design
and implement various robot platforms for teaching introductory
computer science. I taught the class in Fall 2007.
Gnats
We considered how a heterogeneous system composed of many small,
embedded, communication nodes and mobile robots equipped with sensors
and manipulators could accomplish tasks such as navigation, coverage,
and multi-robot foraging. We developed techniques for
physical
path planning using a real network of embedded nodes. The idea
was to use a pervasive network of minimal computing, communicating,
and possibly sensing devices to plan paths for mobile robots. Neither
the network nodes, or the mobile robots, need to know their positions
or build any kind of map. In this type of physical path planning, the
embedded nodes act as vertices and communication links represent
unit-cost edges. For this study we implemented a new hardware
platform, the Gnats. The simplicity of the platform made it
inexpensive (less than $30), allowing us to build and experiment with
a large number of devices. We get some of the benefits of a robot
swarm (pervasiveness) but in a much cheaper, more manageable way than
with a fully mobile swarm.
MORPH
We investigated techniques for energy-aware distributed robot software
systems. As autonomy increases in robot systems, energy usage for
computation will constitute a substantial portion of total energy
consumption. In addition, as we look to teams of robots, system energy
consumption is increasingly impacted by communications across team
members. We developed a system for analyzing system-level energy
behavior of autonomous multi-robot systems. We considered the energy
implications of a heterogeneous team of mobile and immobile robots
conducting a search and rescue mission. This work created a
system-level model of the energy behavior of robot software that might
be used in a search and rescue mission. First, we created models of
the computation and communication energy behavior of the software and
hardware. Then by employing distributed computing techniques, the
lifetime of mission could be prolonged.
Robocup
As a member of our legged robot soccer team, I competed in 2003-2005
U.S. Opens. I ported the Lua and Ruby programming languages to the
Sony AIBO platform, resulting in a more dynamic development
environment. In addition, I worked on individual and team robot
behaviors. I also advised teams of undergraduates in completing lab
projects using the Sony AIBO robots in an Intelligent Perception and
Robotics course in the spring semester of 2004.
MARS-2020
We conducted research on multi-robot teams of unmanned air and ground
vehicles as part of the DARPA sponsored Mobile Autonomous Robot
Software (MARS-2020) initiative. I investigated the use of wireless
communication models in multi-robot behaviors and planning. I
implemented various communication models inside the MissionLab
multi-agent mission specification and simulation environment.