Electrical, Computer, & Systems Engineering Seminar: Cooperation in Autonomous Vehichle-Manipulator Systems: Underwater and Ground Paradigms

Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos
Professor
National Technical University of Athens
ECSE Seminar Series
JEC 3117
Tue, May 28, 2019 at 11:00 AM

Our efforts are centered around developing provable sensor-based motion planning and interaction control methodologies for autonomous systems. Our goal is to design sound interfaces of our provable techniques with higher-level machine-intelligence based decision making schemes. Our relevant experiences in two domains (marine and ground) are briefly reported:

  • Motion Planning Scheme for Cooperative Loading using Heterogeneous Robots
  • Decentralized Control for Cooperative Manipulation of Multiple Underwater Vehicle Manipulator Systems (UVMS) under Lean Communication

In the second part, a brief overview of our parallel research activities will be presented in areas such as:

  • Aerial Robotics: Dynamic Flights in Dynamic Environments - Parity-Based Diagnosis in UAVs: Detectability and Robustness Analyses
  • Neuro-Robotics: From Brain Machine Interfaces to Human Robot Interaction Applications

Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos received a Diploma in Mechanical Eng. (Honors) from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), in 1985 and the MS & Ph.D. in Computer & Systems Engineering from Rensselaer - ECSE, Troy, NY in 1987 and 1991, respectively, being a member of the NASA Center for Intelligent Robotic Systems for Space Exploration. Between 1991-93 he was a Research Assistant Prof. at ECSE - RPI and the NY State CAT in Automation & Robotics. Since 1994 he has been with the Mechanical Eng. Dept. at NTUA, Greece, where he serves as a Professor, Director of the Post-Graduate Program on "Automation Systems", Director of the Control Systems Lab and Director of the Departmental Computation Lab. His interests are in Nonlinear Control and Embedded Systems applications in Sensor Based Motion Planning & Control of multi-Robotic Systems: Manipulators & Vehicles (Mobile, Marine and Aerial). He was awarded the G.Samaras award of academic excellence (NTUA), the Bodosakis Foundation Fellowship (1986-1989), the Alexander Onassis Foundation Fellowship (1989-1990) and an Alexander Von Humboldt Fellowship (1993). Dr. Kyriakopoulos has published more than 320 papers in journals and refereed conferences; he is Specialty Chief Editor for "Frontiers in Robotics and AI" and he serves in the editorial committees of a number of publications, while he has served as an administrative member of a number of international conferences. He has acted as a PI in 35 R & D projects, half of which were funded by the European Commission. He is an IEEE Fellow.