I can't make this however someone on the list may be able to.

Aaron

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-seminar-announce@...
[mailto:owner-seminar-announce@...] On Behalf Of Guido Governatori
Sent: Monday, 22 November 2004 5:30 PM
To: seminar-announce@...
Subject: [seminar-announce] ITEE seminar: Jonathan Roberts & Philip Valencia,
10.00AM, Thu 25 Nov 2004



Robotics and Complex Systems

Speaker: Jonathan Roberts & Philip Valencia, CSIRO ICT Robotics
www.ict.csiro.au/robotics
When: 10.00AM, Thu 25 Nov 2004
Venue: 78-420
Host: Peter Lindsay
Abstract:

We envisage a future in which robots and sensor networks are
ubiquitous. An environment where people, animals, sensors and
robots interact to achieve tasks safely, efficiently and
sustainably. Our approach builds on three areas of substantial
strength: robotics, wireless sensor networks and multi-agent system
design.

The team has a 10 year history in the development of robotic systems
for the mining industry with achievements such as automatic dragline
and rope-shovel operation, underground ore haulage, explosive
loading and mapping. More recently research has included small
autonomous helicopters and tetherless underwater vehicles.

In sensor networks, the team has developed novel techniques for node
localization, network deployment, analysis and repair as well as its
own hardware platform. Applications being investigated include
large-scale environmental monitoring (soil, streams, oceans) and
animal behaviour.

The Robotics Team's sister group, Intelligent Systems, has over 10
years experience in signal processing, classifiers and learning
systems. For the past 3 years this group's research has focussed
strongly on complex systems and methods for automating the design of
complex systems. The complementary skill sets of the Robotics Team
with the Intelligent Systems Group for the ICT Autonomous Systems
Theme, which is able to investigate complex systems from complexity
theory, design and simulation through to real world implementations.

A number of physical systems have already been deployed and are
currently under development. These include:

. Robust sensor networks (Greenhouse Plant Monitoring and Animal
Behaviour Tracking)
. Sensing Structures with self-diagnosis and self-repair
(Intelligent Vehicle Structures)
. Distributed Energy Management and Control (Demand-Side Energy
Management)
. Intelligent sustainable agriculture and autonomous herding (Ad hoc
Wireless Sensor & Actuator Networks)
. Ad hoc Networks / MAS Development sites (Brisbane, Sydney,
Canberra)

These deployments provide physical complex systems which will be
used as test beds to demonstrate our research in complex systems
design, system robustness and adaptability, scalability, energy
efficiency and robotic interaction.

Biography:

Biographical sketch for Jonathan Roberts:
Jonathan Roberts is a senior research engineer for the CSIRO ICT
Centre's Robotics team in Brisbane. His research is focussed on new
techniques in the field of robotics and automation and to apply them
to industrial processes and systems. He has been involved in the
autonomous LHD, dragline swing automation projects as well as
vision-based ground and aerial vehicles. He co-chaired the 1999 and
2003 Australian Conference on Robotics & Automation.

He received an Honours Degree in Aerospace Systems Engineering in
1991 from the University of Southampton, UK. He then joined the
Image, Speech and Intelligent Systems research group in Southampton
as a Research Assistant. His work involved the development of
parallel visual tracking techniques for use in a high speed
autonomous vehicle. He completed a PhD titled "Attentive Visual
Tracking and Trajectory Estimation for Dynamic Scene Segmentation"
at the end of 1994.

Biographical sketch for Philip Valencia:
Philip Valencia is a research engineer in the CSIRO ICT Robotics
Team, holding a B.Eng (Electrical) and B.IT from the Queensland
University of Technology with plans to commence PhD studies at UQ
within the ARC Complex Systems next year. Prior to his current
focus on ad hoc sensor and actuation networks, Philip has for the
past 3 years researched design methodologies for engineering useful
behaviours of complex systems. During this, he designed and
developed MAS simulators for studying emergent behaviours with
intelligent sensing tiles for the CSIRO-NASA Ageless Aerospace
Vehicle project and self-assembling behaviours of smart blocks for
the GREMLab group. He is also the coordinator of the "Engineering,
Design and Control of Complex Systems" interest group within CSIRO
which has brought together scientists with expertise in MAS and
nano/molecular sciences to investigate nano-scale MAS for
self-assembly and self-replicating tasks.

Type: ACCS
Contact:
Peter Lindsay, seminar host (Peter.Lindsay@...)
or Guido Governatori, ITEE seminar co-ordinator, (guido@...)
ITEE seminar web page: http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~seminar
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