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GRASP Seminar Series: Spring 2006
January 13, 12:00 p.m., Wu & Chen Auditorium (View Online)
Naomi Leonard
Princeton University
"Collective motion in natural and engineered multi-agent systems"
Abstract: The collective control of
mobile, multi-agent systems is motivated by a range of engineering applications
that require the coordination of a group of individually controlled systems.
A closely related problem focuses on the role of feedback and interconnection
in the collective motion of animal groups. Tools from control and dynamical
systems can be used to study both engineered and natural mobile networks
in a systematic and scalable way. One goal is to prove stability and robustness
of designed patterns or emergent behaviors. In this talk I will describe
recent collaborative work on models for collective motion based on a planar
group of self-propelled particles with steering control. We extend phase
models of coupled oscillators to include spatial dynamics and use these
models to stabilize and control collective motion patterns. The patterns
can be parametrized, in part, by the extent of oscillator synchrony.
Biography: Naomi Ehrich Leonard is Professor
of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University and Associated
Faculty Member of the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics
at Princeton. Her research focuses on the dynamics and control of mechanical
systems using nonlinear and geometric methods. Current interests include
underwater vehicles, mobile sensor networks, adaptive sampling and application
to observing and predicting physical processes and biological dynamics
in the oceans. She received the B.S.E. degree in mechanical engineering
from Princeton University in 1985. From 1985 to 1989, she worked as an
engineer in the electric power industry for MPR Associates, Inc. She received
the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University
of Maryland, College Park, in 1991 and 1994. In 2004, she was awarded
a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. She is also the recipient
of the Mohammed Dahleh Distinguished Lecture Award (UCSB), a National
Science Foundation CAREER award, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator
Award and an Automatica Prize Paper Award. In 2000, she was the Applied
Ocean Science and Engineering Visiting Scholar at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution. In 2001, she was the Lise Meitner Guest Professor at Lund
University in Sweden.
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