:: Christopher Clark   -   Research ::

My research now branches into several areas of autonomous and intelligent systems. Listed below are some of my projects.

Coordination and Control of Multi-Robot Systems

Many mobile robot applications, such as autonomous mining, planetary exploration, and surveillance systems can benefit from the use of multiple robots working cooperatively in a common environment. Creating collision-free plans for the motion of a large number of robots working together is a challenging task.

In the past we took probabilistic road map approaches. Recently, we have developed a multi-phase approach to efficiently solve this planning problem.

Intelligent Vehicles

The idea of autonomous road vehicles sharing traffic and road condition information has significant potentials in improving road safety . The goal of this project is to devise a method to intelligently filter external  information exchanged between vehicles in highly dynamic road and computer networks, in addition with information from a vehicle's own sensors.  However, from a practical standpoint it is desirable to minimize the number and complexity of sensors implemented on each vehicle to improve the feasibility of applying such technology in the real world. The vehicle network not only allows a vehicle to have a perception of the environment in close proximity but also of events and conditions in downstream traffic which can considerably improve driver awareness.

Autonomous Outdoor Navigation

Applying concepts of mobile robotics from the laboratory to an outdoor vehicle introduces many new challenges. The vehicle must now localize itself in a large and almost structure-less environment. A greater amount of uncertainty is introduced in motion control due to changes in elevation and terrain. The goal of this project is to convert an amphibious vehicle into an autonomous machine capable of navigating from defined starting and goal positions. This vehicle will then serve as a platform for future research.

Autonomous Underwater Robots

Underwater robots have traditionally been limited to oceanic research due to their large size and high cost. However, with today's level of personal computing power, intelligent robotics have becomes accessible to a broad range of people and applications.

Modular and Reconfigurable Robots

Modular and Reconfigurable Robot (MRR) manipulators can add flexibility to a manufacturing setting where changes in the manufacturing system configuration are common. This project focuses on control of MRRs as well as configuration optimization.