Naomi Leonard on Collective Motion and Sensing Networks

Nokia Distinguished Lecture: Naomi Leonard on Collective Motion and Sensing Networks in Nature and Robotics
Naomi Leonard
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Princeton University
Abstract:
From bird flocks to fish schools, animals move together and respond to their environment in remarkable ways; their natural collective motion patterns appear well choreographed and their collective survival strategies seem ingenious. Animal group behaviors inspire design for mobile multi-agent robotic systems, where demanding cooperative sensing tasks, such as exploration and sampling in an uncertain and dynamic environment, find their analogue in natural aggregation behaviors, such as foraging and feeding. However, bio-inspiration of this kind is not transparent because the natural design mechanisms are not well understood. The joint challenge is to explain the enabling mechanisms in animal groups and to define provable mechanisms for robotic groups. And this suggests an integrated approach: formal bio-inspired models and analysis tools derived to synthesize collective robotic motion and exploration can be used to evaluate design hypotheses for animal groups; subsequent revelations from the biology will in turn inspire new approaches for robotic systems. I will discuss mobile robot and animal networks using a common mathematical framework that builds on coupled oscillator dynamics and communication graphs. I will describe application to an adaptive ocean sampling network, a successful, recent field experiment in Monterey Bay, CA and an investigation of dynamics and decision-making in fish schools.

Bio:
Naomi Ehrich Leonard is the Edwin S. Wilsey Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and an associated faculty member of the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University where she has been since 1994. In 2004 she was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. In 2007 the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) named her an IEEE Fellow. She has also received the University of California at Santa Barbara Mohammed Dahleh Distinguished Lecture Award (2005), the Automatica Prize Paper award (1999), the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (1998) and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (1995). In 2001 she was the Lise Meitner Guest Professor at Lund University, Sweden and in 2007 a Visiting Professor at University of Pisa, Italy

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