Computational and Information Sciences Directorate Research Area

Intelligent Autonomy of Small Robots

Advisor: Dr Philip David (philip.j.david4.civ@mail.mil)
Location: Adelphi, Maryland

Keywords: robotic perception, robotic vision, human-robot interaction, autonomous vehicle, autonomous collaboration, biologically inspired robots, mapping and localization

This research develops computational methods that enable robots to perceive and understand their environment; move, see, orient and collaborate in complex missions with limited intervention of human controllers. As the focus is on relatively small, man-packable robots, of particular interest are highly efficient, robust, agile, frugal methods that exhibit excellent properties with limited computational power, storage, and bandwidth. Opportunities exist in the following
areas:

• Robotic autonomy in mixed-initiative operations
• Collaboration of small robots in communications-limited environment
• Biologically-inspired methods for autonomy and collaboration
• Detection and tracking of moving objects from stationary and moving robots
• Multi-robot object tracking, classification and recognition
• GPS-denied localization of robots and objects in the scene
• Human presence and activity detection from shape, face, gait, motion
• Fusion of information from  heterogeneous sensors for robot missions
• Optimization of complex algorithms for computationally frugal platforms
• Experimentation and validation methods in robotics