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Faculty Candidate Talk
3/9/2015 10:30 am
CoRE Lecture Hall (Room 101)

Integrated Modeling, Planning, and Control for Autonomous Robotic Systems

Ashis Gopal Banerjee, GE Global Research, Niskayuna, NY

Faculty Host: Dimitris Metaxas

Abstract

Autonomous robotic systems nowadays operate in dynamic and uncertain environments, where challenges arise from partially known system-environment interaction models, sensing noise, stochastic system behavior, and varying operational goals and constraints. These challenges necessitate bringing about a high degree of intelligence to achieve robust and flexible autonomy with tremendous potential impact in defense, healthcare, and manufacturing. Such intelligence requires an effective integration of system dynamics modeling with operation planning and individual robot control.

In this talk, I will first demonstrate the benefit of an integrated approach using optical robotic manipulation of micro-scale objects as a case study. A high-fidelity Langevin dynamics simulator is developed to model the probability of trapping an object in an optical field. The model is used in a partially observable Markov decision process algorithm to plan paths for multiple objects concurrently with collision avoidance and recovery steps. Experiments show successful transport of 2 micron diameter silica particles across the imaged workspace leading to manipulation of biological cells indirectly using the particles as optical fingers.

A novel functional analysis-based regression algorithm is then presented to scale up such coordinated operations to large multi-agent systems by learning the optimal solutions of decomposed but similar planning problems that are modeled as stochastic integer linear programs. I will conclude by briefly discussing another successful application on human robot collaboration in assembly kitting, and outline future research directions.

Bio

Ashis Gopal Banerjee is a Research Scientist in the Complex Systems Engineering Laboratory within the Software Sciences and Analytics Domain at General Electric Global Research (GEGR). Prior to joining GEGR, he was a Research Scientist and Postdoctoral Associate in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He obtained his Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, and B.Tech. in Manufacturing Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He has received several honors including the 2012 Most Cited Paper Award from the Computer-Aided Design journal, the 2009 Best Dissertation Award from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and the 2009 George Harhalakis Outstanding Systems Engineering Graduate Student Award from the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland. His research interests include micro-bio robotics and automation, mobile multi-robot planning and control, human robot collaboration, cyber physical systems, dynamic system simulation, mathematical modeling, and predictive data analysis.