Bio-Inspired Autonomous Systems

29^th April 2013, 16:00 ALT
Prof. Karl Tuyls
Department Of Knowledge Engineering
Maastricht University
The Netherlands

Abstract

Bio-inspired autonomous systems investigate principles of sensory motor control, autonomy, evolution and coordination from biological systems for the design of advanced software agents and robots. Through abstraction of the design principles of biological systems, techniques can be developed for the control of dynamic robotic systems, decision making, adaptability, and computational optimization. The general research goal and mission of the SwarmLab of Maastricht University is to create adaptive agents and robots that are able to autonomously operate in complex and diverse environments. These systems are capable of learning from their environment and peers in order to tackle complex tasks. For this purpose we investigate bio-inspired techniques such as swarm intelligence (social insect behavior as found in honyebees and ants), reinforcement learning, evolutionary algorithms, and evolutionary game theory. In this talk I will discuss some of the ongoing research projects at SwarmLab that use bio-inspired techniques for coordination, learning and control, and decision making in agent and robotic systems.

Bio:
Karl Tuyls works as an associate professor, (co)-director of SwarmLab, and as scientific director at Dept. of Knowledge Engineering, Maastricht University (UM), the Netherlands. He is also affiliated with the Planning, Agents and Intelligent Systems group of the dept. of informatics, King's College London, UK as a visiting senior research fellow. Previously, he held positions at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), Hasselt University (Belgium) and Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands). His main research interests include Reinforcement Learning, Swarm Intelligence, Robotics, Multi-Agent Systems and Evolutionary Game Theory. In 2000 he has been awarded the Information Technology prize in Belgium and in 2007 he was elected as one of best researchers (TOPDOG) of the faculty of humanities and sciences of UM. His research has received substantial attention from national and international press and media (see http://swarmlab.unimaas.nl).