From one to many, coordination problems of multiple mobile robots

Overview

Abstract

In the last 10-15 years we have seen many robotics platforms reaching an impressive level of robustness and performance. Moreover, the technology costs are such that some platforms are accessible to a larger audience or a larger number of robots can be bought with the same investment. This is leading to a large variety of different robots moving and working in a common environment and the management of such a society of robots is still a challenge. Heterogeneity, safety, coordination are the key points that must be handled in the next future considering both the transient situation of mixed human-robot societies and the steady-state situation in which societies of robots will become a reality. In this talk we will provide some example of challenges and solutions for the coordination of multi mobile robotic systems.

Brief Biography

Lucia Pallottino is currently Associate Professor at the Centro di Ricerca "E. Piaggio" and the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione at the University of Pisa.  She received the "Laurea" degree in Mathematics in 1998 and the Doctoral degree in Robotics and Industrial Automation in 2002. She has been Assistant Professor from 2007 to 2015. She has been Visiting Scholar at M.I.T. (2000-2001) and Visiting Researcher at UCLA, (2004). She is Deputy Director of Centro di Ricerca "E. Piaggio" (since Jan. 2017), Responsible of the CrossLab in Advanced Manufacturing (2018-2020), Co-founder of  Proxima robotics srl, Spin-off of the University of Pisa, Chair of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society Italian Chapter (I-RAS) (Jan. 2015- Dec. 2018). As editorial activities she is Senior Editor of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (since 2020), Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems (Since 2021) and of IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (Since 2021), while she has been Associate Editor of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (2017-2020) and of the IEEE Transaction on Robotics (2014-2017). She is Principal Investigator of the ILIAD European project and Scientific collaborator in the DARKO European project and in the WALK-MAN European project.

Her main research interests within Robotics are in motion planning and control, optimal control, coordination of multi–robot systems, distributed algorithms.