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--- teaching:mfe:ia [2016/03/14 16:01]
mdorigo [Collective Decision Making with Heterogeneous Agents]
+++ teaching:mfe:ia [2016/03/14 16:12]
mdorigo Birattari: I removed old subjects
@@ Line 220: / Line 220: @@
-===== Formal verification of a swarm robotics behavior through statistical model checking =====
+===== Collective Decision Making with Heterogeneous Agents =====
-The goal of this thesis is to apply statistical model
+Swarm robotics is an interesting approach to the coordination of hundreds of robots as it promotes the realization of systems which are scalable, robust and flexible.
-checking to formally verify properties of a collective behavior of a
+The master thesis will study how to provide a swarm system with the cognitive capability of collective decision making.
-robot swarm. Verifying that a system behaves as desired in all
+Each agent has partial knowledge of the available alternatives and of their quality estimate, however the swarm, as a whole, is able to decide for the best option. Recently, numerous works have studied strategies and algorithms to implement this process in distributed systems (often taking inspiration from biology, e.g., bees or cockroaches behaviour). One of the common characteristic of these works is that all the agents of the swarm has the same behaviour. In the Master Thesis project, the student will study how heterogeneity influences the global outcome. We will consider heterogeneity both in the individual behaviour (for instance, robots can estimate diﬀerent option characteristics) and in the interaction network.
-possible situations is necessary when autonomous robots are involved.
-This is particularly true in swarm robotics systems, where the
-interactions of large number of individuals can result in behaviors
-difficult to predict. Model checking is a common technique to formally
-prove properties of a system. However, its results are limited to
-small systems, because medium-sized or large systems are
-computationally impossible to analyze.
-This thesis is will explore the application of a novel model checking technique, called statistical model checking, to formally verify a swarm robotics system. A collective behavior will be firstly implemented in
+In practice, the student is supposed to (i) model the collective decision making problem
-simulation and then analyzed through statistical model checking.
+(ii) design and implement multi-agents simulations, and (iii) analyse and discuss the obtained
+results. Depending on the student skills and preferences, the work can focus more on theoretical
+aspects, thus favouring the modelling and analysis of the problem, or can be more practical,
+thus centring the thesis on the multi-agent implementation part. Possibly, a more practical
+thesis could result (depending on the student skills) in the implementation of a real world
+demonstrator with a swarm of up to 100 robots.
-Required skills: the candidates should be acquainted with C/C++
+* Contacts : [[http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mdorigo|Marco Dorigo]] and Andreagiovanni Reina (IRIDIA)
-programming and have a working knowledge of the English language.
-  * Contacts : [[http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mbiro|Mauro Birattari]] and Manuele Brambilla (IRIDIA)
-===== ROBO-POINTER -- A New Device for Human-Robot Interaction =====
-In this project, the student will design and implement a novel human-robots interaction system.
-The human uses a special laser pointer (called robo-pointer), and by simply pointing to a specific robot he can select it, check its status on a dedicated monitor and send to the robot instructions.
-Now, our arena is equipped with a multi-camera tracking system that allows to detect the 3D position of the robots.
-The student will design a radio sensor network to detect the 3D position of the robo-pointer.
-The two pieces of information will be combined to trigger the selection of the pointed robot.
-* Contacts : [[http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mbiro|Mauro Birattari]] and Andreagiovanni Reina (IRIDIA)
-===== Let a robot swarm get around home! =====
-Robot swarms have very limited knowledge of their environment and therefore, moving around a complex environment (i.e., room with obstacles, building, ...) is a complex task. The idea of this project is to allow an overhead multi-camera tracking system -- that has a complete vision and knowledge of the environment -- to interact with a robot swarm in order to help the swarm move to a specific goal in the environment (for instance, moving from the kitchen to a bedroom of a house).
-The multi-camera tracking system's software is already developed. The student will be supposed to (i) develop a GUI that allows a human operator to specify a goal in the environment, (ii) design and implement a communication protocol (between the tracking system and the robot swarm) that guarantees efficiency and scalability and finally, (iii) test the interaction system in a simulated environment.
-* Contacts : [[http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mbiro|Mauro Birattari]], Gaëtan Podevijn, and Andreagiovanni Reina (IRIDIA)
-===== Online Framework to Compose Robotic Solutions =====
-The design of swarm robotics systems is a challenging task due to difficulties to predict and model swarm systems.
-The most common approach is a trial-and-error process where the developer tries solutions, tests them in simulation and corrects the code to eventually achieve the desired global outcome.
-The project aims to ease this design process: the developer have access to the code of already solved problems (called code-modules), and he can graphically combine the code-modules through a graphical interface to create his own solution.
-The student is supposed to design this novel online framework that offers two main functionalities: (1) to compose new solutions combining the existing code-models to solve new open problems, and (2) to code new code-modules and submit them to the online system.
-* Contacts : [[http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mbiro|Mauro Birattari]], Andreagiovanni Reina, and Gianpiero Francesca (IRIDIA)
-===== UML for Swarm robotics: formal specification of a collective behavior =====
-Swarm robotics is an interesting approach to the
-coordination of hundreds of robots as it promotes the realization of
-systems which are scalable, robust and flexible. However, up to now,
-swarm robotics application has been quite limited, also due to the
-lack of an engineering approach to its development.
-In particular, formal specification has not been applied yet to swarm
-robotics systems.
-In this thesis, we will explore possible ways to formally specify
-swarm robotics systems. As a starting point we will consider UML and
-UML extensions like AUML and UML for multi-agent systems. If
-necessary, we will develop a specific extension for swarm robotics
-systems. Once the preliminary work is done we will consider an
-example, perform formal specification of a task and then implement the
-system in simulation.
-Required skills: the candidates should be acquainted with C/C++
-programming, have a good knowledge of formal specification and UML,
-and have a working knowledge of the English language.
-  * Contacts : [[http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mbiro|Mauro Birattari]] and Manuele Brambilla (IRIDIA)
-===== A GUI for debugging the behavior of a robot swarm =====
-Debugging a robot swarm is a complex and difficult task.
-The desired behavior of the swarm is the result of the complex
-non-linear interactions of tens or hundreds of robots. When
-implementing a swarm robotics system, very often it is necessary to
-analyze individually the output of the execution of each robot, a very
-long and boring process. Since the goal of the developer is to obtain
-a specific collective behavior, it would be better to debug the system
-at the collective level and, only if necessary, at the individual
-level.
-In this thesis we will analyze a possible way to debug the collective
-behavior of a swarm of robots, using macroscopic and microscopic
-modeling. The goal is to develop a GUI that shows the state of the
-collective behavior of the system, and if the user requires it, the
-state of a single robot. We will start with a version of the debugging
-GUI that interface with the ARGoS simulator and eventually one that
-interfaces with the real robots.
-Required skills: the candidates should be acquainted with C/C++
-programming, GUI programming (QT/C++ or QT/Python or Java) and have a
-working knowledge of the English language.
-  * Contacts : [[http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mbiro|Mauro Birattari]] and Manuele Brambilla (IRIDIA)
-===== A virtual machine for mobile code in a swarm of robots =====
-Mobile code is a technology whereby nodes in a network of
-computing nodes exchange code. In other words, code migrates from
-machine to machine like an agent navigating an environment. Mobile
-code is a promising technology for swarm robotics because it would
-enable a new, novel type of robot-to-robot interaction. The aim of this
-project is produce a simple, yet high-performance virtual machine to
-support code exchange in a swarm of robots. A simple experiment with
-the robots demonstrating the capabilities of the VM will be performed.
-Required Skills: Good knowledge of C
-  * Contact: [[http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mbiro|Mauro Birattari]] and Carlo Pinciroli (IRIDIA)
-===== Swarmscope =====
-One the main problems in the development of swarm robotics
-systems is the difficulty of producing, analyzing and debugging code for
-large distributed systems. The aim of this project is to produce a set of
-innovative tools to aid the development of complex swarm robotics
-systems. The produced tools will involve new, creative visualization
-methods and media, novel human-robot swarm interaction and effective
-debugging tools.
-Required Skills: Good knowledge of C++ and Qt4
-  * Contact: [[http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mbiro|Mauro Birattari]] and Carlo Pinciroli (IRIDIA)
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-===== Design of a holonomic drive system =====
+===== Evolution of Modular Controllers for Simulated and Real Robots =====
-Unlike a differential drive system, a holonomic drive system has the advantage of being able to move in any direction at a given instant. The goal of this master thesis is to design and evaluate the performance of a holonomic drive system. The drive system will be assembled from a combination of off-the-shelf components and 3D printed parts. In order to evaluate the drive system, close loop controllers need to be designed and evaluated in C/C++.
+The goal of this master thesis is investigating how modularity in a robot controller can influence the quality of the behaviours obtained through artificial evolution.
+Similarly to the nervous system that can be divided in central and peripheral, the project will study a modular architecture for neural network controllers. The peripheral modules encode the information coming from the sensory subsytems or going to the motor apparatus. The central system encodes the behavioural rules that map sensations to actions. The project will study methods to develop the peripheral modules by maximising the information transfer from the sensory input and to the motor output, on the basis of measures derived from Information Theory.
+The project will involve experimental activities with both simulated and real robots, and will investigate both individual and collective behaviours.
-Required skills: The candidates should have some experience with programming in C/C++, and some experience with 3D modelling (preferably Solidworks). The candidates should be able to use basic kinematics to solve simple physics problems, and have a working knowledge of the English language.
+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/~mdorigo|Marco Dorigo]] (IRIDIA)
+* Contact: [[http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~vtrianni|Vito Trianni]], Marco Dorigo (IRIDIA)