McKinley awarded NSF grant

Philip McKinley, professor of computer science and engineering, has been awarded a research grant from National Science Foundation for a project titled, "TEAMS: Transplanting Artificial Life Behaviors to Mobile Robots."

The project applies evolutionary computation to the design of robust communication services for cooperating groups of robots. Example applications include teams of robots for disaster relief operations, assisting humans in dangerous occupations, and monitoring of critical infrastructure. Evolved behaviors will be evaluated on an NSF-sponsored testbed containing a heterogeneous collection of microrobots. In addition to training graduate students, the project includes educational and outreach components that enable students to watch evolution as it happens, promoting a better understanding of the evolutionary process and its power.

(Date Posted: 2009-08-03)