View source for Autonomous Multirobot Systems Course

=Autonomous Multirobot Systems 2015=

==Important Announcements==

New:

<font color = "red">
* Be sure to bring laptop to class
* Please sign up with piazza for this course: [piazza.com]
* Project 1A description [[2015_Project_1A]] due Friday January 23 at 11:55PM
* Project 1B description [[2015_Project_1B]] due Friday February 6 at 11:55PM
* Research Presentation Overview [[2015_Research_Presentation]]
* Example presentation: [[Media:Example-presentation.pptx]]
* Project 2 description [[2015_Project_2]] due Friday February 27 at 11:55PM
* Project 3 description [[2015_Project_3]] due Tuesday March 10 at 11:55PM
* Project Final description [[2015_Project_Final]] due Thursday March 12 at 11:55PM
* Project 4 description [[2015_Project_4]] due Friday April 17 at 11:55PM
</font>

==Course Overview==

We will survey the inspiration and motivation for multirobot systems, the unique challenges in this field and the wide range of solutions developed thus far. Students will learn about the theoretical and algorithmic aspects of multi-agent and multi-robot systems, including communication, coordination and cooperation. This is a "hands-on" class requiring the students to develop and evaluate their own simulated multirobot system. Autonomous MultiRobot Systems is a graduate course, but undergraduate students with strong programming skills and a background in robotics or AI are welcome.

Topics to be covered: 
*Multiagent architectures.
*Communication, cooperation and coordination in mulitrobot systems.
*Diversity.
*Taxonomies of multirobot systems and tasks.
*Adversarial domains including robot soccer.
*Example biological multiagent systems.
*Multirobot learning.

==Who the Course is For==

The course is open to and intended for graduate and upper level undergraduate students in Computer Science and Engineering

Prerequisites: Students should have strong programming skills and some familiarity with Linux.  Here's a short test to check if you have strong programming skills: [http://wiki.quantsoftware.org/index.php?title=Compinvesti-prog-quiz quiz].  If you don't do well on that quiz, you should either drop the course, or be sure to plan so that you can devote extra time to the course.

==Student Responsibilities==

* Read the emails sent to the course email list.  Check at least daily.
* Participate in class and via the piazza site.
* Don't plagiarize.

==Course Logistics==

* Instructor: [http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~tucker Associate Professor Tucker Balch]
** Office hours: Tu/Th 1:30-2:30  (after class) or by appointment
** firstname at cc.gatech.edu
** phone 678-523-8685
* TA for Python issues: 
** Arindam Bose,
** Office hours: 1.30-3.30 Tuesday outside class.
* TA for C and other issues:
** Jayita Bhattacharya
** Office hours: Wednesday 4:00-5:00 at CCB commons

==Research Presentations==

Visit this page for details on the research presentation component of this course: [[Multirobotics Course Research Presentations]]

==Grading==

* 70%: Projects
** 10%: Project 1: Drunken Sailor
** 10%: Project 2: ASCII Soccer
** 10%: Project 3: Herds and flocks
** 10%: Project 4: Predator / Prey
** 30%: Final Project
* 20%: Presentations
** 15% Best one
** 5% Other one
* 10%: Class participation/pop quizzes
** Drop worst 2

Late policy: -5% per day late

==Plagiarism==

Unless specifically stated otherwise I expect all code that you submit was written by you.  I will present some libraries in class that you are allowed to use.  Otherwise, all source code, images and write ups you provide should have been created by you alone.

What is allowed:

* Meeting with other students to discuss implementations.  You should talk about solutions at the pseudo code level.
* Sharing snippets of code to solve specific (small) problems such as examples of how to address sections of arrays in Python.  In this case the shared code should not be more than 5 lines.
* Searching the web for other solution outlines that you may draw on (but not copy directly).  If you are inspired by a solution on the web, you MUST cite that code with comments in your code.

What is not allowed:

* Copying sections of code longer than 5 lines.  Note that merely changing variable names does not suffice.
* Copying code from the web.
* Use of ideas from the web that are not cited in comments.

==Week 1==
<B>Tuesday, 6 January, 2015</B><BR>
Course overview and intro<BR>
Definition of autonomy (NASA Video)<BR>
Example of multi agent coordination (Harvard Video)<BR>
Drunken Sailor description<BR>

<B>Thursday  8 January 2015</B><BR>
Intro and discussion of ASCII Soccer<BR>
How does sensing affect necessity for diversity?<BR>

==Week 2==
<B>Tuesday, 13 January, 2015</B><BR>
Introduction to the deliberative/reactive dichotomy<BR>
AI winter<BR>
Gray Walter<BR>
First intro to reactive robotics<BR>

<B>Thursday  15 January</B><BR>
Class cancelled<BR>

==Week 3==
<B>Tuesday 20 Jan</B><BR>
Overview and discussion of sailor project (no memory)<BR>
Bug algorithms: [[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~motionplanning/lecture/Chap2-Bug-Alg_howie.pdf by Howie Choset]]<BR>

<B>Thursday 22 Jan</B><BR>
Overview and discussion of sailor project (memory)<BR>
Build a map<BR>

==Week 4==
<B>Tuesday 27 Jan</B><BR>
Lecture by Brian Hrolenok. 
Slides [http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/b/bhroleno/princeton-2014/ here]<BR>
Slides on Reynold's Boids [https://www.dropbox.com/s/7of35rvkgtlqef9/Boids.pdf?dl=0 here]<BR>

<B>Thursday 29 Jan</B><BR>
Motor Schema Based Navigation (Arkin)<BR>
See especially section 4: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.40.9929&rep=rep1&type=pdf AuRA: Principles and Practice in Review]<BR>

==Week 5==
<B>Tuesday 3 Feb</B><BR>
Motor Schemas Case Study: See Chapter 6 [https://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/handle/1853/6637/GIT-CC-98-25.pdf Balch Thesis] <BR>
Motor Schema Formulations: See Appendix [https://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/handle/1853/6637/GIT-CC-98-25.pdf Balch Thesis] <BR>

<B>Thursday 5 Feb</B><BR>
Reinforcement Learning: Section 1, 3.1, 4.2, 5.2 [http://www.jair.org/media/301/live-301-1562-jair.pdf Kaelbling Littman Moore]<BR>
<BR>

==Week 6==
<B>Tuesday 10 Feb</B><BR>
Balch presents example presentation<BR>
* LaValle, Steven M. "Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees A Цew Tool for Path Planning." (1998). [[http://webpages.uncc.edu/xiao/itcs6151-8151/RRT.pdf]] <BR>
* Bruce, James, and Manuela Veloso. "Real-time randomized path planning for robot navigation." Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2002. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on. Vol. 3. IEEE, 2002. [[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/Web/People/coral/old/publinks/mmv/02iros-rrt.pdf]]
<BR>
<B>Thursday 12 Feb</B><BR>
* Arindam presents Python framework<BR>

==Week 7==
<B>Tuesday 17 Feb</B><BR>
Team 1: Robot Soccer +5<BR>
* Primary paper: Biswas, Joydeep, et al. "Opponent-driven planning and execution for pass, attack, and defense in a multi-robot soccer team." Proceedings of the 2014 international conference on Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2014. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mmv/papers/14aamas-cmdragons.pdf
* Veloso, Manuela, Peter Stone, and Kwun Han. "The CMUnited-97 robotic soccer team: Perception and multi-agent control." Robotics and Autonomous Systems 29.2 (1999): 133-143. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone/Papers/bib2html-links/RAS99.pdf
* Wu, Shih-Lin, et al. "A Multi-agent Algorithm for Robot Soccer Games in Fira Simulation League." FIRA RoboWorld Congress USA. 2007. http://robogames.net/symposium/2007/07-118-Wu-ChangGungUniv-Multi-agentAlgorithmforRobotSocce.pdf<BR>
Team 2: Flocking, Herding Swarming +5<BR>
* Primary paper: Reynolds, Craig W. "Flocks, herds and schools: A distributed behavioral model." ACM Siggraph Computer Graphics 21.4 (1987): 25-34. http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~dt/siggraph97-course/cwr87/ <BR>
* Moeslinger, Christoph, Thomas Schmickl, and Karl Crailsheim. "A minimalist flocking algorithm for swarm robots." Advances in Artificial Life. Darwin Meets von Neumann. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011. 375-382. http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Schmickl/publication/221531179_A_Minimalist_Flocking_Algorithm_for_Swarm_Robots/links/09e41507eadaa2b0cd000000.pdf <BR>
* Couzin, Iain D., et al. "Effective leadership and decision-making in animal groups on the move." Nature 433.7025 (2005): 513-516. http://www.uvm.edu/~pdodds/files/papers/others/2005/couzin2005.pdf <BR>

Check out this video: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1087180774641291&fref=nf<BR>

<B>Thursday 19 Feb</B><BR>
Team 6: Ant Navigation & Stigmergy +5<BR>
* Primary Paper: Beckers, Ralph, O. E. Holland, and Jean-Louis Deneubourg. "From local actions to global tasks: Stigmergy and collective robotics." Artificial life IV. Vol. 181. 1994. http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~rad/courses/cs266-fall04/papers/beckers-alife94.pdf<BR>
* Beckers, Ralph, Jean-Louis Deneubourg, and Simon Goss. "Trails and U-turns in the selection of a path by the ant Lasius niger." Journal of theoretical biology 159.4 (1992): 397-415. http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~rad/courses/cs266/papers/beckers-uturns.pdf<BR>
* Wehner, Rudiger. "Desert ant navigation: how miniature brains solve complex tasks." Journal of Comparative Physiology A 189.8 (2003): 579-588. http://www.mnf.uni-greifswald.de/fileadmin/Zoologisches_Museum/Hildebrandt/Dokumente/wehner03.pdf<BR>
Team 10: Honeybee Communication +5<BR>
* Primary paper: C. Grüter and W. Farina, The honeybee waggle dance: can we follow the steps?, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 242-247, 2009.
* Bartholdi, T. Seeley, C. Tovey and J. Vate, The Pattern and Effectiveness of Forager Allocation Among Flower Patches by Honey Bee Colonies, Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol. 160, no. 1, pp. 23-40, 1993. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519383710027<BR>
* S. Nakrani and C. Tovey, From honeybees to Internet servers: biomimicry for distributed management of Internet hosting centers, Bioinspir. Biomim., vol. 2, no. 4, pp. S182-S197, 2007. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-3190/2/4/S07<BR>
* M. Beekman, G. Sword and S. Simpson, Biological Foundations of Swarm Intelligence, in Swarm Intelligence, 1st ed., C. Blum and D. Merkle, Ed. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2008, pp. 3-42.<BR>

==Week 8==
<B>Tuesday 24 Feb</B><BR>
* Recap of Project 2: Communication in Robot Soccer<BR>
* Overview of Project 3: Flocking and Herding<BR>
<BR>
Team 9: Robot Formation Control<BR>
* Balch, Tucker, and Ronald C. Arkin. "Behavior-based formation control for multirobot teams." Robotics and Automation, IEEE Transactions on 14.6 (1998): 926-939. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=736776
* Ji, Meng, Abubakr Muhammad, and Magnus Egerstedt. "Leader-based multi-agent coordination: Controllability and optimal control." American control conference. 2006. http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~magnus/Papers/JiEgerstedtMuhammadACC06.pdf
* Lewis, M. Anthony, and Kar-Han Tan. "High precision formation control of mobile robots using virtual structures." Autonomous Robots 4.4 (1997): 387-403. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1008814708459
<BR>
<B>Thursday 26 Feb</B><BR>
Team 3: Self Assembly and Modular Robotics 1<BR>
*White, P. J., Kris Kopanski, and Hod Lipson. "Stochastic self-reconfigurable cellular robotics." Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA'04. 2004 IEEE International Conference on. Vol. 3. IEEE, 2004. http://creativemachines.cornell.edu/papers/ICRA04_White.pdf
*Tolley, Michael T., et al. "Stochastic modular robotic systems: a study of fluidic assembly strategies." Robotics, IEEE Transactions on 26.3 (2010): 518-530. http://creativemachines.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/T-RO_2010_Tolley.pdf
*Tolley, Michael T., Jonathan D. Hiller, and Hod Lipson. "Evolutionary design and assembly planning for stochastic modular robots." New Horizons in Evolutionary Robotics. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011. 211-225. http://www.michaeltolley.com/publications/IROS_2009_Tolley.pdf
<BR>
Team 4: Self Assembly and Modular Robotics 2<BR>
*Yim, Mark, et al. "Modular self-reconfigurable robot systems [grand challenges of robotics]." Robotics & Automation Magazine, IEEE 14.1 (2007): 43-52. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4141032&tag=1
*J.W. Romanishin, K. Gilpin, and D. Rus, “M-Blocks: Momentum Driven, Magnetic, Modular Robots,” in 2013 IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)., Tokyo, Japan, 2013, pp. 4288 - 4295 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6696971
*Felton et al., “Robotic Self – Assembly by Folding: A Printed Inchworm Robot,” in 2013 IEEE/RSJ Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)., Karlsruhe, Germany, 2013, pp. 277 - 282 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6630588<BR>

<B>Friday 27 Feb</B><BR>
Drop day<BR>

==Week 9==
<B>Tuesday 3 March</B><BR>
Team 11: Path planning for robot teams: Cooperative/Deliberative<BR>
*Otte, Michael, and Nikolaus Correll. "Any-com multi-robot path-planning with dynamic teams: Multi-robot coordination under communication constraints."Experimental Robotics. Springer Berlin Tracts in Advanced Robotics, pp. 743-757, New Delhi, India, 2010. http://tinyurl.com/oygn8a4
*Luna, Ryan, and Kostas E. Bekris. "Efficient and complete centralized multi-robot path planning." Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on. IEEE, 2011. http://tinyurl.com/lt52szf
*Desaraju, Vishnu R., and Jonathan P. How. "Decentralized path planning for multi-agent teams with complex constraints." Autonomous Robots 32.4 (2012): 385-403. http://tinyurl.com/n6fo7pz

Team 8: Optimal Task Allocation<BR>

*Dias, M.B.; Zlot, Robert; Kalra, N.; Stentz, A., "Market-Based Multirobot Coordination: A Survey and Analysis," Proceedings of the IEEE , vol.94, no.7, pp.1257,1270, July 2006 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1677943&isnumber=35292
*Lagoudakis, Michail G., et al. "Simple auctions with performance guarantees for multi-robot task allocation." Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2004.(IROS 2004). Proceedings. 2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on. Vol. 1. IEEE, 2004. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1389434&isnumber=30275
*Petersen, K.; Kleiner, A.; von Stryk, O., "Fast task-sequence allocation for heterogeneous robot teams with a human in the loop," Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on , vol., no., pp.1648,1655, 3-7 Nov. 2013 URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6696570&isnumber=6696319

<B>Thursday 5 March</B><BR>
Team 7: Multi-robot team learning<BR>
*J. Hu and M. Wellman, ‘‘Multiagent reinforcement learning: Theoretical framework and an algorithm,’’ in Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Machine Learning, Morgan Kaufmann: San Francisco, CA, pp. 242–250, 1998. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.138.2589&rep=rep1&type=pdf
*M. Littman, ‘‘Friend-or-foe Q-learning in general-sum games,’’ in Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Machine Learning, Morgan Kaufmann, pp. 322–328, 2001. http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~mlittman/papers/icml01-ffq.pdf 
* A. Greenwald and K. Hall, ‘‘Correlated Q-learning,’’ in Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Machine Learning, 2003. http://www.aaai.org/Papers/Symposia/Spring/2002/SS-02-02/SS02-02-012.pdf

Team 5: Coordinated control for sensing<BR>
* Simmons, Reid, et al. "Coordination for multi-robot exploration and mapping." AAAI/IAAI. 2000. http://www.aaai.org/Papers/AAAI/2000/AAAI00-131.pdf
* Pereira, Tiago, António Paulo Moreira, and Manuela Veloso. "Coordination for Multi-robot Exploration Using Topological Maps." CONTROLO’2014–Proceedings of the 11th Portuguese Conference on Automatic Control. Springer International Publishing, 2015. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-10380-8_49
* Dames, Philip, and Vijay Kumar. "Cooperative multi-target localization with noisy sensors." Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2013 IEEE International Conference on. IEEE, 2013. http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~pdames/media/DamesKumarICRA2013TechnicalReport.pdf
* Marjovi, Ali, and Lino Marques. "Multi-robot topological exploration using olfactory cues." Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013. 47-60. http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/197455/files/chp3A10.10072F978-3-642-32723-0_4.pdf

==Week 10==
<B>Tuesday 10 March</B><BR>
Class cancelled due to POTUS visit<BR>

<B>Thursday 12 March</B><BR>
Team 2 Presentation 2<BR>
* Haque, Musad, Amirreza Rahmani, and Magnus Egerstedt. "Geometric foraging strategies in multi-agent systems based on biological models." Decision and Control (CDC), 2010 49th IEEE Conference on. IEEE, 2010

==Spring Break==
<B>Monday 16 March - Friday 20 March</B><BR>

==Week 11==
<B>Tuesday 24 March</B><BR>
Brian Hrolenok: Learning Models of Executable Behavior

Topic 2<BR>

<B>Thursday 26 March</B><BR>
Misha Novitzky: Learning Recognizable Behaviors<BR>
Prof. Magnus Egerstedt<BR>

==Week 12==
<B>Tuesday 31 March</B><BR>
Team 1 Presentation 2<BR>
* Wawerla, Jens, Gaurav S. Sukhatme, and Maja J. Mataric. "Collective construction with multiple robots." Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2002. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on. Vol. 3. IEEE, 2002. (Found at: http://www.sfu.ca/~jwawerla/papers/wawerla02construction.pdf)
Team 3 Presentation 2<BR>
* Werfel, Justin K., Kirsten Petersen, and Radhika Nagpal. "Distributed multi-robot algorithms for the TERMES 3D collective construction system." Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2011. http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/ssr/papers/iros11wksp-werfel.pdf

<B>Thursday 2 April</B><BR>
Team 4 Presentation 2<BR>
* Wei, Hongxing, et al. "Sambot: A self-assembly modular robot for swarm robot." Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2010 IEEE International Conference on. IEEE, 2010. http://sambot.buaa.edu.cn/webadmin/htmledit/UploadFile/201266193955593.pdf
Team 5 Presentation 2<BR>
* Lindsey, Quentin, Daniel Mellinger, and Vijay Kumar. "Construction with quadrotor teams." Autonomous Robots 33.3 (2012): 323-336. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10514-012-9305-0/fulltext.html

==Week 13==
<B>Tuesday 7 April</B><BR>
Team 6 Presentation 2<BR>
Team 7 Presentation 2<BR>

<B>Thursday 9 April</B><BR>
Team 8 Presentation 2<BR>
* Albin, A.; Weinberg, G.; Egerstedt, M., "Musical abstractions in distributed multi-robot systems," Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on , vol., no., pp.451,458, 7-12 Oct. 2012 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6385688&isnumber=6385431
Team 9 Presentation 2<BR>

==Week 14==
<B>Tuesday 14 April</B><BR>
Team 10 Presentation 2<BR>
Team 11 Presentation 2<BR>

<B>Thursday 16 April</B><BR>
<BR>
ASCII Soccer Championship<BR>

==Week 15==
<B>Tuesday 21 April</B><BR>
Topic 1<BR>
Topic 2<BR>

<B>Thursday 23 April</B><BR>
Topic 1<BR>
Topic 2<BR>

==Finals Week==
<B>27 April - 1 May</B><BR>