The Schedule

Talk 1: Robot fakery for multi-experiments

Dr. Dylan Shell

Abstract: I want to discuss problems in which robots conspire to present a view of the world that differs from reality, making robots more versatile as experimental testbeds. The inquiry is motivated by the problem of validating robot behavior physically despite there being a discrepancy between the robots we have at hand and those we wish to study, or the environment for testing that is available versus that which is desired, or other potential mismatches in this vein. I'm going to talk about our recent work that lays the theoretical groundwork for such concepts and demonstrates its feasibility and utility: specifically consider the efficiency of robot experiments by examining the feasibility of conducting several experiments simultaneously, interleaving execution and sharing resources between them.

Talk 2: Cooperation of Multi-Agent Teams Amidst Clutter

Dr. Alyssa Pierson

Abstract: Robots will transform our everyday lives, from home service and personal mobility to large-scale warehouse management and wildlife monitoring. Across these applications, robots need to interact with humans and other robots in complex, dynamic environments. Understanding how robots interact allows us to design safer and more robust systems. This talk presents an overview on how we can integrate underlying cooperation and interaction models into the design of the robot teams. We use tools from behavioral decision theory to design interaction models, combined with game theory and control theory to develop distributed control strategies with provable performance guarantees. This talk focuses on teams of robots interacting with cluttered environments, with applications in autonomous driving, drone videography, and wildlife monitoring.

Talk 3: Cyber Maritime Cycles: Distributed Autonomy of Marine Robots for Smart Ocean

Dr. Fumin Zhang

Abstract: There is a perceivable trend for robots to serve as networked mobile sensing platforms that are able to collect data in aquatic environments in unprecedented ways.   We argue that the effective transformation between Eulerian and Lagrangian data streams represents a fundamental principle underlying many data collection missions for marine robots. Timely transformation of data streams is the major challenge to construct cyber cycles that are needed by marine autonomy. Data driven machine learning methods have great potential, but are constrained by special difficulties associated with underwater communication. A distributed autonomy structure that is able to cope with the limited information sharing is envisioned as the future. This challenge can only be addressed by interdisciplinary efforts from researchers in underwater acoustics, underwater networking, and marine robotics. This talk will discuss recent advancements towards integrating marine robotic platforms with underwater communication and networking technology. Future research requires open and cost-effective experimental infrastructure that integrates marine robotic platforms, underwater acoustic device, and underwater networking equipment.

Talk 4: Versatility through cooperation: how coupling and physical interaction in heterogeneous robot teams enable new solutions

Dr. Herbert Tanner

Abstract: Beyond the classical multi-agent system paradigm of global behavior emerging from identical decentralized local interaction lies a space where teams comprised of highly heterogeneous systems coordinate deliberately to perform tasks that none of any homogeneous collection those individual systems can carry out on their own. Just like in human teams members bring together their individual skills and capacities and combine them with those of their teammates to synthesize an aggregate unit that can outperform any individual in the range of tasks possible, so can teams of heterogeneous robotic systems coordinate and cooperate given the appropriate theoretical analysis framework and achieve a joint objective that would have been impossible otherwise. Such a robotic team exhibits a unique type of versatility arising from teammate interaction. This talk explores this perspective on multi-agent coordination from a mathematical viewpoint focused on dynamical systems modeling, planning, and control aimed at unlocking the potential of diversified robotic teams to become versatile tools offering more than the sum of their parts

Talk 5: Generating Motion for Versatile Robots

Dr. Kostas Bekris

Abstract: The aspiration of modern robotics is to achieve a level of versatility, robustness and safety that will allow the wide deployment of robots in unstructured domains and everyday human spaces. This requires progress at multiple components of robotics, from mechanisms, to sensing as well as decision-making and reasoning. This talk starts from robot planning algorithms that allow robotic arms to operate in the presence of clutter as well as deal with dynamics of vehicular systems. It shows that these methods can be integrated with machine learning models and used for controlling novel, soft robotic mechanisms that have been developed either for safe, effective grasping and manipulation, such as soft adaptive hands, or locomotion over uneven terrains, such as tensegrity robots. The talk will then proceed to describe perception methods, which can identify and robustly track objects without the need for cumbersome human annotation, and which allow the effective application of planning and control methods for adaptive manipulation, such as robotic packing and tight insertion for assembly. The talk will conclude with a brief discussion on how this progress empowers the next step in the field involving the development of robots that are socially cognizant and can be safely and effectively integrated into our society.

Talk 5: Extreme manned and unmanned vehicles developed at Lehigh

Dr. Joachim L. Grenestedt

Abstract: Lehigh's Composites Lab has designed, built and tested a range of advanced manned and unmanned vehicles, including high-speed boats (manned and unmanned), powered and non-powered aircraft, and various land vehicles. Our vehicles have set speed records, size records, and won medals in a variety of competitions.

Poster and Demo Session

Poster session at the robotics lab

Lab tour 1 and demo at 3:20 pm

Lab tour 2 and demo at 3:50 pm