Purdue University Mark

Purdue University

Dr. Richard Voyles' Multi-Agent Systems

Multi-Agent Systems


Scout and Ranger

Prof. Voyles is involved in the Center for Distributed Robotics' DARPA contract on Distributed Robotics Using Reconfigurable Robots. Specifically, Prof. Voyles is designing an alternate Scout prototype called the TerminatorBot, which has two arms and no conventional locomotors. Instead, the TerminatorBot uses its arms for both manipulation and locomotion.

Distributed Robotics Sources

Some publications that have resulted from or are related to this work:

  1. P. Rybski, S. Benjaafar, J. R. Budenske, M. Dvorak, M. Gini, D. Hougen, D. G. Krantz, P. Y. Li, F. Malver, B. Nelson, N. Papanikolopoulos, S. A. Stoeter, R. Voyles and K. B. Yesin, "A Robotics Reconnaissance and Surveillance Team," in Video Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Best Video Award
  2. R.M. Voyles, "TerminatorBot: A Robot with Dual-Use Arms for Manipulation and Locomotion," in Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, v 1, pp. 61-66.
  3. D. F. Hougen, S. Benjaafar, J. C. Bonney, J. R. Budenske, M. Dvorak, M. Gini, H. French, D. G. Krantz, P. Y. Li, F. Malver, B. Nelson, N. Papanikolopoulos, P. E. Rybski, S. A. Stoeter, R. Voyles and K. B. Yesin, "A Miniature Robotic System for Reconnaissance and Surveillance," in Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, v 1, pp. 501-507.
  4. K. Yesin, B. Nelson, N. Papanikolopoulos, R. Voyles and D. Krantz, "Active Video System for a Miniature Reconnaissance Robot" in Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
  5. K.B. Yesin, B.J. Nelson, N.P. Papanikolopoulos, R.M. Voyles, and D. Krantz, "A System of Launchable Mesoscale Robots for Distributed Sensing," in Proceedings of the 1999 SPIE International Symposium on Intelligent Systems and Advanced Manufacturing, September, 1999, Boston, MA.
  6. K.B. Yesin, B.J. Nelson, N.P. Papanikolopoulos, R.M. Voyles, and D. Krantz, "Active Video Modules for Launchable Reconnaissance Robots," in Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechatronics, May, 1999, Istanbul, Turkey.

Self-Adaptive Software

Prof. Voyles is a Co-Investigator in the DARPA contract on Self-Adaptive Software, awarded to Carnegie Mellon University. The goal of the contract is to develop Port Based Agents that are self-aware and have the ability to reconfigure themselves to adapt to changing environments.

As part of this work, self-adaptation is being investigated on the TerminatorBot. We are investigating learning algorithms that will allow the TerminatorBot to adjust its locomotion gait to better suit terrain conditions.

Some publications that have resulted from or are related to this work:

  1. R.M. Voyles, "TerminatorBot: A Robot with Dual-Use Arms for Manipulation and Locomotion," in Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, v 1, pp. 61-66.
  2. P.E. Rybski and R.M. Voyles, "Task Training of a Mobile Robot Using a Hidden Markov Model-Based Gesture Recognition System," in Proceedings of the 1999 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, v. 1, pp. 664-669.
  3. R.M. Voyles and P.K. Khosla, "Gesture-Based Programming: A Preliminary Demonstration," in Proceedings of the 1999 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, v. 1, pp 708-713 (19MBytes!).

Copyright: © 1999-2014 by Richard Voyles,

rvoyles [at] purdue [dot] edu

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, (765) 494-4600