Research
Main Research Topics
Swarm robotics for Firefighting
How to make resilient robots for operations in dangerous environments?
Current projects
- A throwable, jumping robot for firefighting applications
Programming robot swarms
What are the fundamental concepts that constitute a swarm behavior, and how to combine them? How to identify and fix errors and bugs in a swarm behavior?
Current projects
- Buzz, a programming language for heterogeneous robot swarms
- Space- and time-dynamic distributed hash tables
- In-network computation of swarm functions
- Debugging infrastructure for robot swarms
- Machine-learning and bug detection
- Augmented-reality-based development and testing
Algorithms for coordination with contradicting goals
How to harmonize the individual needs of robots (e.g., battery limitations, completion of assigned tasks), with swarm-level coordination requirements (e.g., connectivity maintenance)?
Current projects
- Scalable network deployment and maintenance
- Energy-constrained coordination
- Spatially-aware task allocation
Algorithms for collective spatial perception
How can a robot swarm construct a shared representation of complex aspects of the environment, despite severe limitations in sensing and computational capabilities?
Current projects
- Decentralized pattern detection with noisy sensors and lying robots
Primitives for human-swarm interaction
Which behavioral traits can a swarm exhibit to interact with a human operator efficiently? Conversely, what kind of commands can a human operator give a swarm, for the swarm to execute them effectively?
Current projects
- Hybrid goal- and robot-oriented interfaces
- Tactile interfaces