A distributed optimization framework for localization and formation control: applications to vision-based measurements

Multiagent systems have been a major area of research for the last 15 years. This interest has been motivated by tasks that can be executed more rapidly in a collaborative manner or that are nearly impossible to carry out otherwise. To be effective, the agents need to have the notion of a common goal shared by the entire network (for instance, a desired formation) and individual control laws to realize the goal. The common goal is typically centralized, in the sense that it involves the state of all the agents at the same time. On the other hand, it is often desirable to have individual control laws that are distributed, in the sense that the desired action of an agent depends only on the measurements and states available at the node and at a small number of neighbors. This is an attractive quality because it implies an overall system that is modular and intrinsically more robust to communication delays and node failures

Autonomous Navigation of Mobile Robots in Complex Dynamic Environments

Most of the future robots will be mobile, and the main challenge is to develop algorithms for their autonomous navigation as well as for human-robot interactions. The Laboratory for Autonomous Systems and Mobile Robotics (LAMOR) at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing of the University of Zagreb is involved in the research of such mobile robotic systems, and currently participates in a number of related international and national research projects. This paper addresses the issue of autonomous navigation of mobile robots in complex dynamic environments, providing state of the art of the domain and major LAMOR’s contribution to it. At the end, we present an application example of the autonomous navigation technologies in flexible warehouses, which we have been developing within a Horizon 2020 project SafeLog

Learning cognitive maps: Finding useful structure in an uncertain world

In this chapter we will describe the central mechanisms that influence how people learn about large-scale space. We will focus particularly on how these mechanisms enable people to effectively cope with both the uncertainty inherent in a constantly changing world and also with the high information content of natural environments. The major lessons are that humans get by with a less is more approach to building structure, and that they are able to quickly adapt to environmental changes thanks to a range of general purpose mechanisms. By looking at abstract principles, instead of concrete implementation details, it is shown that the study of human learning can provide valuable lessons for robotics. Finally, these issues are discussed in the context of an implementation on a mobile robot. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg