Autonomous Coordinated Motion

Through collaboration with several other research programs, we are studying the notion of autonomous coordinated motion. Dramatic examples of such behavior are exhibited in nature by flocking birds, herding mammals, schooling fish, and swarming insects. Research at Yale is aimed at understanding this behavior, simulating it on computers, and programming robots to exhibit similar behaviors on the ground, in the air, and under water. We are particularly interested in tasks such as: congregation, navigation, obstacle avoidance, target capture, target fleeing, and others. Yale is also involved in RoboCup Soccer, where small robots compete once per year on small artificial soccer fields against teams from other research groups from around the world. Yale’s experimental testbeds include a custom-made team of "soccerbots," a small fleet of Probotic Cye "Luxury Wagons," and a small number of model helicopters.

Research in autonomous coordinated motion involves a cross-disciplinary blend of ideas drawn from automatic control, high-level programming languages and planning. Steve Morse’s research in multi-level logic-based switching control is central to the algorithmic supervision, coordination, and control of autonomous vehicles. Central to the software effort is Paul Hudak’s notion of Functional Reactive Programming (FRP). With FRP, it is possible to develop software for control applications in a high-level, declarative manner, and to use the same infrastructure in a simulation or prototyping environment, including the use of FRP animation to display control signals and related data. Finally, Drew McDermott’s work on hierarchical planning contributes to the high-level strategies used in intelligent coordinated motion. The overall goal of the research is to develop a comprehensive methodology for the integration of sensing, control, planning, and learning in autonomous, multi-robot systems.

Faculty members involved in the Center for Computational Vision and Control include Drew McDermott, Brian Scassellati, Steve Zucker, and Paul Hudak in the Computer Science Department, Steve Morse in Electrical Engineering, and Jim Duncan, Hemant Tagare, and Larry Staib in the Radiology Department of the Medical School.