Formations of Autonomous Agents: Rigidity Maintenance and Formation Operations

Prof. Brian Anderson (NICTA, RSISE)

DATE: 2005-10-21
TIME: 11:00:00 - 12:00:00
LOCATION: RSISE Seminar Room, ground floor, building 115, cnr. North and Daley Roads, ANU

ABSTRACT:
When formations of agents move in the plane or in three-dimensional space, the shape of the formation needs to be maintained. The seminar introduces the use of rigidity ideas to ensure retention of the formation shape, with a focus on identifying the minimum number of inter-agent constraints that need to be fulfilled. Change of formation due to splitting, merging, or closing ranks (following the loss of one or more agents) is also considered. Considerable differences also arise between the case where two agents with constrained distance jointly maintain that distance, and the case where one only is tasked with maintaining the distance.

BIO:
Professor Brian Anderson was interim President and CEO of NICTA, from its inception until May 2003, when he became Chief Scientist of NICTA.

He undertook his undergraduate degrees in Mathematics, in 1962, and Electrical Engineering, in 1964, at Sydney University, and his PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, in 1966.

Professor Anderson worked in industry in the United States and at Stanford University, before serving as Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Newcastle, Australia from 1967 through 1981. Professor Anderson left the university of Newcastle to accept the post of Professor and Head of Department of Systems Engineering at the Australian National University (ANU), in Canberra. He was made Director of the Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering, at the ANU, from 1994 to 2002.

He has held many visiting appointments in the United States, Europe and Asia, including the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Professor Anderson has served as a member of a number of government bodies, including the Australian Science and Technology Council and the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering, and Innovation Council. He is also a member of the Board of Cochlear Limited, the world's primary supplier of cochlear implants. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Australia.

In 1989 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, London, and in 2002 a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Engineering. He holds honorary doctorates from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the Universities of Sydney, Melbourne, and New South Wales. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1993.

He was President of the International Federation of Automatic Control for the triennium 1990 to 1993, and served as President of the Australian Academy of Science for four years from 1998 to 2002.

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