IEEE CDC 2016 Workshop - canceled due to insufficient registration

Control of Collectives: from Models to Missions in a Test-bed

Workshop Description

The study of collective behavior has ranged from investigation of the principles governing biological collectives across species to the design and implementation of robotic systems, based on concepts and algorithms of distributed control and estimation for complex missions such as marine data collection. Within this broad range there is an opportunity to study system design as shaped by considerations of information structure, diverse sensor technologies and performance metrics. Such studies can be carried out in the laboratory, with precision and relevance to illustrative missions, if appropriate support for computation, sensing and implementation are in place. This workshop centers on research carried out in one such test-bed, at the Intelligent Servosystems Laboratory (ISL) of the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland. It is the aim of this workshop to disseminate insights and tools developed in ISL from theoretical and experimental exploration of multi-agent systems with various capabilities. The workshop will consider multi-agent models using methods of nonlinear control theory. Speakers will map the mathematical aspects of such models to problems of practical interest such as search-and-rescue missions in marine settings. Understanding based on analysis and simulations of these problems will be reinforced by laboratory experiments employing multiple sensory modalities, including millimeter scale global positioning, passive vision, active ranging, and broadband acoustic signaling. The outcomes will be evaluated using a range of performance metrics.

Target Audience

Intended audience would include graduate students, industry participants with a focus on sensing, multi-agent robotics and real-time implementation, researchers and control software designers interested in the broad area of collaborative autonomous systems.

Speakers and their Biographies in Alphabetical Order

Biswadip Dey (biswadipdey.1984@gmail.com) is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Jadavpur University in India, a Master’s Degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and a 2015 PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park. His current research focus is on collective behavior in biology and robotics, reconstruction algorithms, and distributed decision-making.

Kevin Galloway (kgallowa@usna.edu) is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He received his PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2011, and held a post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, between 2011 and 2013. His current focus is on strategies for collective behavior, distributed robotics, and nonlinear control theory.

P. S. Krishnaprasad (krishna@isr.umd.edu) is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, since 1980. He also holds a joint appointment with the Institute for Systems Research. He received his PhD degree in 1977 from Harvard University. His current research interests include robotics and collective behavior, and physics of nonequilibrium states.

Kenneth Miltenberger Jr. (klmiltenbergerjr@gmail.com) is a Requirements Manager and Lieutenant in the US Coast Guard and a 2016 Master of Science graduate in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park. His current research interests include control theory, distributed robotic systems, embedded signal processing and multimodal sensing.

Workshop Goals

The specific aims of this workshop are to: (i) provide rapid access to knowledge on modeling collectives, using the self-steering particle abstraction of an agent in 2 or more dimensions; (ii) expose relevant symmetry concepts for control laws; (iii) highlight dyadic building blocks for collective behavior derived from pursuit strategies and associated feedback laws; (iv) define and analyze shape spaces associated to specific directed graphs of interaction, and associated special solutions (e.g. equilibria, pure-shape equilibria, periodic solutions) for closed loop dynamics; (v) introduce agent-beacon interactions to model illustrative missions for search-and-rescue, with programmable attention to a beacon (target of interest); (vi) introduce multi-modal sensing – Vicon motion capture, Kinect (depth camera for active ranging, RGB and passive sound source localization), acoustic beacon localization using robot equipped with microphones mounted on manikin head; (vii) provide details on test-bed with embedded signal processing, Robot Operating System (ROS) control architecture, associated software tools (MATLAB Robotics toolbox, Parallel Computation toolbox) and data collection environment; (viii) describe outcomes of experiments conducted in the test-bed, and resulting insights for system design.

Synopsis of Workshop Content and Major Topics

The workshop presentations will be made in the following sequence (with speaker names) allowing 45 minutes for each item (with discussions at the end of each presentation):

(1) Models and Control of Individual agents – self-steering particles, moving frames, particles in Lie groups, symmetries, relative equilibria and formations, dyadic building block interactions – pursuit, escape etc.; introduction to ISL test-bed; Vicon motion capture principles and operation; sensor field-of-view constraints in natural and engineered systems and consequences; (P. S. Krishnaprasad)

(2) Models and Control of Collectives – Cyclic pursuit and its modification in which each agent pays attention to a neighbor and a beacon; Constant Bearing (CB) pursuit strategy and a beacon-aware collective strategy derived from CB pursuit – denoted as CBB; results for shape equilibria; formulas for determination of equilibrium shapes; results of experimental implementation via a motion capture system; (Kevin Galloway)

Coffee break – 20 minutes

(3) Models and Control of Collectives – Cyclic CB pursuit and its modification by referencing a beacon (CBB); stability conditions for circling equilibria in multi-agent system subject to CBB; existence of pure shape equilibria (spirals); Topological Velocity Alignment (TVA) strategy and its relevance to missions such as monitoring and coverage; Vicon motion capture operation and applications – further details; (Biswadip Dey)

(4) Leader based Cyclic Pursuit in a Collective – Cyclic CB pursuit and its modification based on one agent (leader) referencing a beacon – denoted as CBL; circling equilibria for CBL; performance evaluation of CBL against CBB using simulations and motion capture experiments; CBL for acoustic beacon and acoustic localization principles; experimental results in ISL test-bed; ROS architecture for control of multi-agent systems in test-bed; signal processing and calibration issues involving acoustic beacon sensing; (Kenneth Miltenberger Jr)

Schedule, Titles and Abstracts of Lectures

Welcome and Opening Remarks (P. S. Krishnaprasad)

Lecture 1 (P. S. Krishnaprasad)

Lecture 2 (Kevin Galloway)

Discussion

Coffee Break

Lecture 3 (Biswadip Dey)

Lecture 4 (Kenneth Miltenberger Jr.)

Discussions and Closing Remarks

Bibliography

E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2002). A simple control law for UAV formation flying, Institute for Systems Research Technical Report, TR 2002-38, 35 pages.

E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2003). Steering Laws and Continuum Models for Planar Formations, Proc. 42nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 3609-3614, IEEE, New York.

E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2004). Equilibria and Steering Laws for Planar Formations, Systems and Control Letters, 52(1), 25-38.

E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2005). Natural Frames and Interacting Particles in Three Dimensions, Proc. 44th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2842-2846, IEEE, New York.

K. Ghose, T. K. Horiuchi, P. S. Krishnaprasad and C. F. Moss (2006). Echolocating Bats use a Nearly Time-optimal Strategy to Intercept Prey, PLoS Biology, 4, 865-873, e. 108.

E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2006). Steering Laws for Motion Camouflage, Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 462, 3629-3643.

P. V. Reddy, E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2006). Motion Camouflage in Three Dimensions, Proc. 45th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 3327-3332, IEEE, New York.

P. V. Reddy, E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2007). Motion Camouflage with Sensorimotor Delay, Proc. 46th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 1660-1665, IEEE, New York.

K. S. Galloway, E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2007). Motion Camouflage in a Stochastic Setting, Proc. 46th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 1652-1659, IEEE, New York.

E. Wei, E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2009). Pursuit and an Evolutionary Game, Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 465, 1539-1559.

K. Galloway, E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2009). Geometry of Cyclic Pursuit, Proc. 48th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 7485-7490, IEEE, New York.

M. Mischiati and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2010). Motion Camouflage for Coverage, Proc. American Control Conference, 6429-6435, American Automatic Control Council, Philadelphia.

C. Chiu, P. V. Reddy, W. Xian, P. S. Krishnaprasad, and Cynthia F. Moss (2010). Effects of competitive prey capture on flight behavior and sonar beam pattern in paired big brown bats Eptesicus fuscus, The Journal of Experimental Biology, 213(19), 3348-3356.

K. S. Galloway, E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2010). Cyclic Pursuit in Three Dimensions, Proc. 49th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 7141-7146, IEEE, New York.

E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2010). Extremal Collective Behavior, Proc. 49th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 5432-5437, IEEE, New York.

E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2011). Optimal Natural Frames, Communications in Information and Systems, 11(1), 17-34 (published online October 2010).

M. Mischiati and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2011). Mutual Motion Camouflage in 3D, Proc. 18th World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control, 4483-4488.

K. S. Galloway, E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2011). Portraits of Cyclic Pursuit, Proc. 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference (CDC-ECC), 2724-2731, IEEE, New York.

M. Mischiati and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2012). The Dynamics of Mutual Motion Camouflage, Systems and Control Letters, 61(9), 894-903, September 2012.

F. Zhang, E. W. Justh, and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2013). Boundary tracking and obstacle avoidance using gyroscopic control, A. Johann et al. (eds.), Recent Trends in Dynamical Systems, Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics 35, 417-446, Springer Basel 2013.

B. Dey and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2012). Trajectory Smoothing as a Linear Optimal Control Problem, Proc. 50th Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing 2012, 1490-1497, online at IEEExplore since 2013.

K. Galloway, E. W. Justh and P. S. Krishnaprasad (2013). Symmetry and reduction in collectives: cyclic pursuit strategies, Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 469 (2158), 20130264, (23 pages of the print journal and 12 pages of electronic supplementary material).

K. Galloway and B. Dey (2015). Station Keeping through Beacon-referenced Cyclic Pursuit, Proc. 2015 American Control Conference, 4765-4770, American Automatic Control Council, Philadelphia.

U. Halder and B. Dey (2015). Biomimetic Algorithms for Coordinated Motion: Theory and Implementation, Proc. 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 5426-5432, IEEE, New York.

K. Galloway and B. Dey (2016). Stability and Pure Shape Equilibria for Beacon-referenced Cyclic Pursuit, Proc. 2016 American Control Conference, 161-166, American Automatic Control Council, Philadelphia.

K. Miltenberger Jr (2016). Leader Based Cyclic Pursuit, Master of Science Thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park.

Links (about collective behavior) of possible interest to participants in the Workshop

Recent work on flocking by cyclic pursuit here . Recent work on optimality, reduction and collective motion here