What Is Fundamentally Computable by Networked, Dynamical Systems?

Departments: Electrical Engineering
Time: Tuesday, March 22, 2016 - 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Type: Seminar Series
Presenter: Magnus Egerstedt, Georgia Tech
Room/Office: Dunham 107
Location:
J. Robert Mann, Jr. Engineering Student Center
10 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511
United States
See map: Google Maps

What Is Fundamentally Computable by Networked, Dynamical Systems?

Magnus Egerstedt
Georgia Tech

Abstract: The common theme in a number of distributed controls applications is that nodes in the network should operate on locally available information in such a way that a desired global outcome is achieved. For example, in multi-agent robotics, a number of different controllers have been proposed that achieve global outcomes, such as formation maintenance and coverage control. But, what can such a collection of robots ultimately achieve when coordinating their behaviors? One abstract way in which this question can be viewed is as a distributed computation question, with the initial conditions of the robots being the input, the coordinated control laws being the program, and the final configuration being the output from the “computation". In this talk, we will investigate what fundamentally can be computed in a distributed manner across a network of agents by combining graph theory with geometric, nonlinear control tools, as well as connect the findings to the more practical question of how to make teams of mobile robots do useful things based solely on locally available information.

Bio: Magnus Egerstedt is the Schlumberger Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he serves as Associate Chair for Research. He received the M.S. degree in Engineering Physics and the Ph.D. degree in Applied Mathematics from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, the B.A. degree in Philosophy from Stockholm University, and was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Harvard University. Dr. Egerstedt is the director of the Georgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (GRITS Lab), a Fellow of the IEEE, and a recipient of a number of research and teaching awards, including the Ragazzini Award from the American Automatic Control Council.

Date: Tuesday, March 22, 4pm
Location: Mann Student Center, Dunham 107, 10 Hillhouse Avenue