The seminar-ai@cse mailing list announces talks that people in this class might find interesting. For example, here is an announcement for Thursday:
Dear All,
Announcing a New AI Seminar. The details are:
Title: Model-based Programming of Robust Agile Systems
Presenter: Brian C. Williams
Presenter URL: http://people.csail.mit.edu/williams/Web%20site/williams.shtml
Affiliation: Model-based Embedded and Robotic Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Affiliation URL: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mers/mers.htm
Date: Thursday 11th September 2008
Time: 12:00:00
Location: CSE Seminar Room, Level 1, K17
Abstract: Autonomous, self-repairing explorers, such as deep space probes, have successfully performed complex missions by employing model-based executives that continuously monitor mission goals, diagnose failures and plan repairs. These executives employ models encoded as probabilistic constraint automata, in order to observe and control the hidden states of the system. These executives have also been incorporated within model-based programming languages that facilitate the creation of a wide range of fault adaptive systems, including automobiles and naval ships.
Future explorers, such as autonomous air vehicles and walking robots, will require far greater agility, in order to robustly achieve their missions. For example, to avoid falling, a walking robot must quickly detect a loss of balance, and replan its control trajectory appropriately. This talk presents recent advances in model-based programming and execution for agile systems. First, to reason about a system~Rs dynamics, these executives employ probabilistic constraint automata that are extended to hybrid discrete/continuous constraints. Second, to robustly achieve missions, these executives employ planning methods that reason about continuous, as well as discrete, state changes, and employ compilation and model-predictive control methods in order to adapt on the fly. Finally, these executives employ estimation methods for hybrid PHA that detect subtle failures through active control. Model-based execution is demonstrated both on a team of cooperative air vehicles and a biped walking machine.
Biography of Speaker: Professor Williams leads the Model-based Embedded and Robotic Systems http://mers.csail.mit.edu/mers.htm group, within the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory http://www.csail.mit.edu/index.php(CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology http://web.mit.edu/. His research concentrates on model-based autonomy http://ic-www.arc.nasa.gov/ic/project/mba/index.html -- the creation of long-lived systems that explore autonomously, while commanding, diagnosing and repairing themselves using fast, commonsense reasoning. Current research focuses on model-based programming and cooperative robotics: Model-based programming supports goal-directed programming of robust explorers and everyday devices, by incorporating model-based deductive capabilities within traditional embedded programming languages. Cooperative robotics extends model-based autonomy to robotic networks of cooperating space, air, land and undersea vehicles, on Earth and on other planets.
Professor Williams received his S.B., S.M and Ph.D. in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at MIT, and worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and NASA Ames Research Center, prior to joining the faculty at MIT. He is a pioneer in the fields of qualitative reasoning, model-based diagnosis and autonomous systems. He received a NASA Space Act Award for Remote Agent, the first fully autonomous, self-repairing space explorer, demonstrated onboard the NASA Deep Space One probe in May, 1999. He was a member of the Tom Young Blue Ribbon Team in 2000, assessing future Mars missions in light of the Mars Climate Orbiter and Polar Lander incidents, and is currently a member of the Advisory Council of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech. He has won four best paper prizes for his research in diagnosis, qualitative algebras, propositional inference and soft constraints. He is a fellow of AAAI, has served as guest editor of the Artificial Intelligence Journal http://www.elsevier.nlinca/publications/store/5/0/5/6/0/1/ and has been on the editorial boards of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research http://www.jair.org/, and MIT Press.
Host: Toby Walsh
Seminar Convenor: Van Hai Ho
Thankyou