Colloquium
Time:
Colloquium: Dr. Lantao Liu
Date:
3:30 pm –
4:30 pm
Avery Hall
Room: 115
Target Audiences:
1144 T St
Lincoln NE 68508
Lincoln NE 68508
Additional Info: AVH
Dr. Lantao Liu
Associate Professor
Indiana University-Bloomington
“Coordinated Drone Systems for Exploration and Inspection”
In this talk, I will begin by discussing our work on bounded rational drones that operate alongside other intelligent agents, such as other drones (or humans), in shared workspaces. To complete collective tasks, each drone must reason about the behaviors of its neighboring agents. However, real-world agents often do not act with perfect rationality due to various limitations, and predicting their optimal behavior can be both computationally demanding and error-prone. To overcome this, we utilize the concept of bounded rationality, enabling drones to account for and adapt to the suboptimal actions of others while staying within their own computational constraints. Next, I will present our recent progress in a hybrid system that integrates drones with mini ground robots. This system is designed for complex search and manipulation tasks, leveraging the complementary strengths of both aerial and ground-based robots. After the drone explores the environment and identifies hidden spaces with narrow openings, the mini ground robot can be deployed to navigate these confined areas for further exploration or manipulation. Finally, I will present a robotic information-gathering framework for environmental monitoring. This method enables the robot to use limited sensing data to efficiently characterize environmental attributes and construct 3D maps, such as terrain models, with broad applications in autonomous mapping, exploration, inspection, and navigation.
Lantao Liu is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Intelligent Systems Engineering and Computer Science at Indiana University-Bloomington, specializing in Autonomy, Robotics, and AI. His research focuses on developing autonomous systems for diverse environments, with a particular interest in multi-robot coordination and unmanned vehicles, including aerial, ground, and aquatic systems. His robotic systems have been tested in real-world field trials in challenging environments such as construction sites, emergency zones, farmlands, outdoor aquatic areas, and recently motor speedways. Dr. Liu’s work has garnered multiple best paper nominations and awards at important robotics conferences like Robotics Science and Systems (RSS), the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), and the International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS). Before his role at Indiana University, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Southern California’s Department of Computer Science from 2015 to 2017 and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute from 2013 to 2015. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2013.
Associate Professor
Indiana University-Bloomington
“Coordinated Drone Systems for Exploration and Inspection”
In this talk, I will begin by discussing our work on bounded rational drones that operate alongside other intelligent agents, such as other drones (or humans), in shared workspaces. To complete collective tasks, each drone must reason about the behaviors of its neighboring agents. However, real-world agents often do not act with perfect rationality due to various limitations, and predicting their optimal behavior can be both computationally demanding and error-prone. To overcome this, we utilize the concept of bounded rationality, enabling drones to account for and adapt to the suboptimal actions of others while staying within their own computational constraints. Next, I will present our recent progress in a hybrid system that integrates drones with mini ground robots. This system is designed for complex search and manipulation tasks, leveraging the complementary strengths of both aerial and ground-based robots. After the drone explores the environment and identifies hidden spaces with narrow openings, the mini ground robot can be deployed to navigate these confined areas for further exploration or manipulation. Finally, I will present a robotic information-gathering framework for environmental monitoring. This method enables the robot to use limited sensing data to efficiently characterize environmental attributes and construct 3D maps, such as terrain models, with broad applications in autonomous mapping, exploration, inspection, and navigation.
Lantao Liu is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Intelligent Systems Engineering and Computer Science at Indiana University-Bloomington, specializing in Autonomy, Robotics, and AI. His research focuses on developing autonomous systems for diverse environments, with a particular interest in multi-robot coordination and unmanned vehicles, including aerial, ground, and aquatic systems. His robotic systems have been tested in real-world field trials in challenging environments such as construction sites, emergency zones, farmlands, outdoor aquatic areas, and recently motor speedways. Dr. Liu’s work has garnered multiple best paper nominations and awards at important robotics conferences like Robotics Science and Systems (RSS), the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), and the International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS). Before his role at Indiana University, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Southern California’s Department of Computer Science from 2015 to 2017 and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute from 2013 to 2015. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2013.