Kansas researchers work on "organization reasoning" for robots
Remote sensing robots often struggle to communicate with their handlers; $200K grant will go to buy critical equipment, train graduate students
Another entrant into the remote sensing robot sector, although this one is far from commercialization. Professor Scott DeLoach of Kansas State University, that school announced this week, is currently working on technology that permits better communication and synchronicity between mobile robots and their remote control handlers. “The goal is to establish ‘organizational reasoning’ as a key component in a new approach to building highly robust cooperative robot teams,” he said. Using a $219,140 DoD grant for “Test-bed for Intelligent, Mobile Sensors,” DeLoach intends to use the move to buy and develop various intelligent sensor networks, as well as critical equipment including robots, sensors, laptops and servers. “The equipment will significantly enhance the quality of projects by providing a flexible infrastructure to execute large-scale demonstrations,” said DeLoach, pointing out also that the funds would help train students in this critical field and create a stronger graduate student base for completing large projects.
How far has DeLoach gone in his researches to date? “So far, we have developed a model of autonomous teams that allows teams to reason about organizing and reorganizing, and a goal model for dynamic systems that allows us to capture the dynamics of the environment in which such teams operate. We have also developed a high-level simulator that allows us to test the team reasoning algorithms to determine if they actually allow the team to adapt to their environment and the problem-solving process.” Best of all, DeLoach has also created a search application for weapons of mass destruction for use within the simulator; a similar improvised bomb search application is in the works.
