Robotics in Adverse Conditions: Overcoming Sensing, Communication, and Uncertainty Challenges, Dr. Leonardo Bobadilla, Florida International University

Abstract: Several essential domains of robotics and autonomous vehicles, such as surveillance, planetary exploration,  oceanic monitoring, automated construction, and search and rescue, require filtering and planning for robots in scenarios where communication, sensing, and uncertainty modeling are difficult. In this talk, I will discuss our progress and experiments with collaborators in addressing these issues in

three directions: 1) new limited-communication coordination approaches that can work in extremely low-bandwidth conditions; 2) a framework for embedding task-specific uncertainty requirements into navigation policies; and 3) an approach to localize and navigate using features of naturally occurring scalar fields.
 

Bio: Dr. Leonardo Bobadilla is currently an Associate Professor at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences (KFSCIS), College of Engineering and Computing at Florida International University (FIU). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2013. He is interested in understanding the information requirements for solving fundamental robotics tasks such as navigation, patrolling, tracking, and motion safety. He has deployed test beds that monitor and control many mobile units requiring minimal sensing, actuation,  and computation. He has published over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers in Robotics, Control, and Oceanic Engineering. His research articles have appeared in prestigious journals such as  IEEE Transactions of Automation Science and Engineering, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, and  Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, and in top conferences such as ICRA (IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation), IROS(IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems), and RSS (The Robotics: Science and Systems). The ARL, ARPA-E, DoD, NSF, ONR, DHS, FDEP, and the Ware Foundation have sponsored his research.