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--- teaching:mfe:ia [2011/03/23 08:31]
mdorigo [Adaptive collective alignment with a swarm of e-puck robots]
+++ teaching:mfe:ia [2011/03/23 16:51]
mdorigo 1 project added
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-===== Self-organized task allocation in swarm robotics =====
+===== Experiments with the e-puck robot and the IRIDIA TAM =====
-Swarm robotics is an innovative branch of collective robotics that aims at designing robot behaviors by taking inspiration from social animals, such as ants and bees. "Task allocation" in such robotic swarms is the problem of "who is doing what job and when?" Obviously, this problem of assigning jobs to a whole swarm robots can be very difficult, especially when using many robots that cannot communicate with each other on a global level.
+At IRIDIA, we are conducting many experiments with the e-puck
+robot and a task abstraction device, the IRIDIA TAM. The topic of the
+master thesis would be integrate the TAM with the e-puck robot and our
+simulation environment, ARGoS. The final goal is to have the TAM tested
+in real-robot experiments.
-The goal of the project is to implement new algorithms for solving this problem on the e-Puck robot and run extensive experiments with this robot in various environments. The project will involve experimentation with about 30 real e-Pucks. The project is tightly connected to the research in swarm robotics carried out at IRIDIA.
+The subject is practical and requires a dedicated student that is able
+to program in C++. A possible candidate should be willing to work with
-Required skills: The candidates should be acquainted with C/C++ programming and have a working knowledge of the English language.
+hardware and real robots. Additionally, the candidate must be very
+motivated and creative. The working language is English.
   * Contacts: [[http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mbiro|Mauro Birattari]], Marco Dorigo, Arne Brutschy, Giovanni Pini (IRIDIA)
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+===== Automatic fitness function definition in evolutionary robotics =====
+Evolutionary robotics is a fascinating approach to the design of robot controllers that takes inspiration from natural evolution.
+In order to obtain a robot that is able to perform a desired task, the evolutionary robotics approach considers a population of robots that evolves in time. Each robot is characterized by a genotype that defines somehow its behavior. Each robot is evaluated according to a fitness function that measures the ability of the robot to perform the desired task. Robots with a low fitness are eliminated. Robots with a high fitness remain in the population and generate offsprings -- e.g., robots with a similar genotype obtained via mutation and/or cross-over. Through this process, generation by generation, the evolutionary robotics approach is able to obtain robots that present higher and higher fitness and that are therefore able to perform the desired task more and more effectively.
+One of the main open problems in evolutionary robotics is that the definition of an appropriate fitness function is a very complex, labor-intensive, and time-consuming activity that requires the attention of an expert researcher.
+The goal of this master thesis is to devise an automatic method to define a fitness function in order to obtain a robot that is able to perform a desired task. This automatic method will be based on machine learning and metaheuristic algorithms. In particular, it will draw ideas from the fields of reinforcement learning and of on-line adaptation of parameters in optimization algorithms.
+Required skills: The candidates should be acquainted with C/C++ programming and have a working knowledge of the English language.
+* Contact: [[http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mbiro|Mauro Birattari]], Marco Dorigo, Vito Trianni (IRIDIA)
 ===== Simulation et optimisation de trafic routier =====