09-28

Perception, Cognition, and Action in Teams of Robots

Complete and robust intelligent agents capable of facing complex environments require an effective integation of perception, cognition, and action. Robot soccer, as a pioneering multi-robot task, has offered a concrete challenging research testbed, where a team of robots faces an uncertain and dynamic environment created by a team of opponent robots. We have researched in robot soccer developing single-robot and multi-robot perception, cognition, and action algorithms. To form an effective team of robots, individual robots need to be robust. We have developed effective object recognition, localization, and behavior-based algorithms. In addition, to achieve a reliable team of robots, we research on team coordination strategies, team response to a dynamic world, behavior recognition, opponent modeling, and learning. In this talk, I will present our contributions to addressing these multi-robot challenges. I will conclude setting my research goals in perspective. I will discuss some of the fascinating open questions towards creating increasingly robust teams of autonomous intelligent robots.

Bio:

Manuela M. Veloso is Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon. She also received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1980 and an M.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1984 from the Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon.

Veloso researches in the area of artificial intelligence with focus on planning, control learning, and execution for single and multirobot teams. Veloso has a long experience of classic deterministic planning by analogy transfer, and more recently she has developed probabilistic plan and policy reuse algorithms. She is currently particularly interested in learning and using abstract domain representations that can be reused for planning and problem solving.

Veloso has extensively researched in action selection algorithms to address uncertain, dynamic, and adversarial environments. Veloso and her students have developed teams of robot soccer agents, which have been RoboCup world champions several times. She investigates learning approaches to a variety of control problems, in particular the performance optimization of algorithm implementations, and plan recognition in complex data sets.

Veloso is a Fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence. She is Vice President of the RoboCup International Federation. She was awarded an NSF Career Award in 1995 and the Allen Newell Medal for Excellence in Research in 1997. Veloso was Program Co-Chair of 2005 National Conference on Artificial Intelligence and is now the Program Chair of the 2007 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

Veloso strongly endorses the new Carnegie Mellon Technology Bridge World effort. She created the new "V-unit" project that provides an opportunity for graduate students to grow a vision of how computer science and technology can affect non-traditional problems dealing with society, ecology, and sustained devlopment.

Veloso is the author of one book on "Planning by Analogical Reasoning" and editor of several other books. She is also an author in over 200 journal articles and conference papers.