MEMS Seminar: Bogdan Epureanu, "Task Allocation and Strategy Adaptation in Teams of Autonomous Vehicles and Humans"

Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, Fall 2024 Seminar Series, welcomes Bogdan Epureanu, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, at The University of Michigan, to present the MEMS Seminar lecture: "Task Allocation and Strategy Adaptation in Teams of Autonomous Vehicles and Humans."

ABSTRACT: Autonomous vehicles are increasingly thought of as team members alongside humans in both military and civilian applications. Such autonomous agents are capable of handling dangerous tasks but are limited in their reactions to unforeseen events. At the same time, humans have more adaptive and creative problem-solving skills but are limited in terms of handling some specific tasks and managing cognitive loads. The inclusion of autonomy within a team requires a significant effort to train agents to distribute tasks dynamically for optimal operation. In addition, the need to address diverse requirements requires heterogeneous teams where agents can have different capabilities and levels of risk tolerance. While heterogeneity in multi-agent teams offers benefits, new challenges arise including how to find optimal heterogeneous team compositions and how to distribute tasks dynamically among agents in complex operations.

This presentation will discuss modeling tools for autonomous vehicles with focus on artificial intelligence algorithms for heterogeneous agents to learn dynamically task distributions in teams with humans and other autonomous agents through reinforcement learning in synthetic environments.

BIO: Bogdan I. Epureanu completed his Ph.D. at Duke University in 1999. He is the Roger L. McCarthy Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan, with a courtesy appointment in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Dr. Epureanu is the Director of the Automotive Research Center, which leads the way in areas of autonomy of ground systems, including vehicle dynamics, control, and autonomous behavior, human-autonomy teaming, high performance structures and materials, intelligent power systems, and fleet operations and vehicle system of systems integration. His research focuses on nonlinear dynamics of complex systems, such as teaming of autonomous vehicles, enhanced aircraft safety and performance, early detection of neurodegenerative diseases, and forecasting tipping points in engineered and physical systems such as disease epidemics and ecology.