Course Description
This is primarily a research oriented, seminar-style course covering the topics of control, communication, cooperation, and coordination aspects in multi-robot systems. It enables students to understand, devise, and solve problems in multi-robot systems and will include project-based assignments.
Athena Title
Multi Robot Systems
Prerequisite
CSCI(ARTI) 4530/6530 and (CSCI 4500/6500 or CSCI 1730 or permission of department)
Semester Course Offered
Not offered on a regular basis.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Multi-robot systems have potential in applications such as search and rescue, autonomous exploration, sensing and communication infrastructure, and transportation. Specifically, coordinating a group of robots involves repetitive tasks of rendezvous, formation control, and flocking of the distributed robots. Multi-robot systems are finding synergies in multiple relevant research areas such as self-driving connected cars and industrial/logistic robotics. Therefore, it is important to understand and advance the robotics literature in the field of multi-robot systems and their applications, which is the main objective of this course. This course will primarily be research oriented, with most lectures presented in a seminar-type format, and there will be a small simulation/hardware project assignment. First, the instructor will present the initial few lectures and cover the fundamental concepts in networked multi-robot systems. In turn, each student will present the analysis of a research paper selected from top robotics conferences or relevant journals. All participants will be required to write a short review of the assigned readings before each lecture. In addition, the course requires each student to formulate and address a relevant research problem in networked multi-robot systems through simulation/hardware experiments either individually or in teams (depending on the course enrollment). The analysis of the chosen research problem, proposed solution, and experimental evaluation should be completed and reported in a conference-style paper by the end of the term (this is the equivalent of the final exam).
Topical Outline
Topics to be covered: • Multi-robot Consensus and Rendezvous • Multi-robot Formation Control • Multi-agent Cooperation • Security and Adversarial Actions • Applications of Multi-Robot Systems
Syllabus