Ga. Tech researchers involved in development of robot teams supported by Army grant

Georgia Tech researchers will take part in an alliance the goal of which to develop new methods of creating autonomous, intelligent and resilient robot teams.

The project was awarded a five-year, $27 million grant by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

A story by John Toon on the Georgia Tech website, www.gatech.edu/, says the alliance is headed by the University of Pennsylvania.

Toon’s story says the robot teams, consisting of multiple types of robots and sensors with varying abilities, are designed to assist humans in a wide range of missions in dynamically changing, harsh and contested environments. These include search and rescue of hostages, information gathering after terrorist attacks or natural disasters, and humanitarian missions.

The award is part of ARL’s Distributed and Collaborative Intelligent Systems and Technology (DCIST) Collaborative Research Alliance. Penn Engineering will lead this alliance in collaboration with the Army Research Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Aeronautics and Astronautics Department, and Georgia Tech. The consortium also includes faculty from University of California San Diego, University of California Berkeley and University of Southern California.

Toon’s story says teams of robots and human first responders might eventually be used to survey a disaster site for victims, but unpredictable environments and ongoing hazards could damage or destroy some of the robots, or disrupt communications between them. If each robot were just preprogrammed and given specific instructions, that could lead to gaps in their search. But if the team were able to reconfigure itself in response to damage, the remaining robots could collaboratively decide how to reorganize and work with human partners to complete the mission.

“Through this exciting project, Georgia Tech will help develop novel tools and techniques that enable human operators to work effectively and safely in teams together with autonomous robots,” said Magnus Egerstedt, executive director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, in the report. “These types of questions connect well with our expertise in the areas of human-robot interactions, distributed decision making and learning, and swarm robotics.”

Beyond Egerstedt, the Georgia Tech researchers affiliated with this multidisciplinary project are Sonia Chernova, assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing; Panagiotis Tsiotras, Dean’s Professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering; and Justin Romberg, Associate Chair for Research and Schlumberger Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

This story was originally published October 16, 2017 at 7:13 PM with the headline "Ga. Tech researchers involved in development of robot teams supported by Army grant."