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SUMMARY:Collaborative Robot Tracking of Geophysical Flows: How Local Measu
 rements Discover Global Structures
DTSTART:20120508T103000
DTEND:20120508T113000
DTSTAMP:20260408T132934Z
UID:2cf83333bf44ba00281e9419e11b8f7388b4b0cea93415068d6342cb
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:M. Ani Hsieh\, Drexel University\, USA\nGeophysical fluid dyna
 mics (GFD) is the study of natural large-scale fluid flows\, such as ocean
 s\, the atmosphere\, and rivers.  Recent years have seen the use of auton
 omous underwater and surface vehicles (AUVs and ASVs) to study various phy
 sical phenomena in geophysical fluid environments.  These include mapping
  of ocean temperature and salinity profiles\, understanding the distributi
 on of plankton assemblages\, and tracking harmful algal blooms.  However\
 , operating AUVs and ASVs in geophysical fluid environments poses signific
 ant challenges since GFD flows are naturally stochastic and aperiodic.  N
 evertheless\, GFD flows\nexhibit dynamical coherent structures which are i
 mportant for the estimation of the underlying geophysical fluid dynamics a
 nd thus\, the prediction of the various physical\, chemical\, and biologic
 al processes in them.\n\nIn this talk\, I will discuss strategies for dist
 ributed autonomous sensing and tracking of a class of coherent structures 
 that coincide with minimum energy and time trajectories in the ocean and a
 re important for quantifying transport phenomena in flows. I will present 
 a collaborative control framework that enables teams of\nAUVs/ASVs to coll
 ectively harvest coherent structure information on flows using on-board se
 nsing capabilities. Furthermore\, since these coherent structures delineat
 e boundaries of regions with distinct flow dynamics and correspond to regi
 ons which is unstable\, I will also present a framework that enables the c
 ontrol of the spatial distribution of sensing resources in time-varying an
 d uncertain environments.  The goal of this work is to synthesize ideas f
 rom nonlinear dynamical systems\, transport theory\, and robotics to impro
 ve the performance of collaborative unmanned systems in geophysical  flow
  environments.\n\nBio:\nAni Hsieh is an Assistant Professor in the Mechani
 cal Engineering & Mechanics Department and the Director of the Robotics Pr
 ogram at Drexel University.  She received a B.S. in Engineering and B.A. 
 in Economics from Swarthmore College in 1999 and her PhD in Mechanical Eng
 ineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. Her current work in 
 the Scalable Autonomous System Laboratory at Drexel University focuses on 
 bridging the gap between statistical physics\, nonlinear dynamics and cont
 rol\, and distributed multi-agent robotic systems.  She was a 2011 ONR Su
 mmer Faculty Fellow and received the 2012 Office of Naval Research (ONR) Y
 oung Investigator Award.
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STATUS:CONFIRMED
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