Thursday, February 16, 2006
4:15 pm
B17 Upson Hall

Computer Science
Colloquium
Spring 2006


Raffaello D'Andrea
Cornell University

Design and Control of Autonomous Systems


The commoditization of computation, sensing technology, and communication has enabled the conceptualization of new physical systems with large levels of autonomy. In many instances, we are no longer limited by physical hardware, but rather our ability to design and deploy reliable systems that take advantage of these new capabilities. In this talk I will discuss some of our contributions in the area of control and system design, and our attempts to tame and manage the complexity inherent in high performance autonomous systems. An example is Kiva Systems, a rapidly growing Boston area start-up company that provides a customer solution involving hundreds of autonomous vehicles, which could potentially be the first "killer-app" for autonomous, distributed, and networked mobile robots in an industrial setting.