The hypothesis of this research is that a successful cyber-physical system will need to be a learning agent, learning the properties of its sensors, effectors, and environment from its own experience, and adapting over time. Inspired by human developmental learning, we believe that foundational concepts such as Space, Object, Action, etc., are essential for such a learning agent to abstract and control the complexity of its world. To bridge the gap between continuous interaction with the physical environment, and discrete symbolic descriptions th

The objective of this project is to investigate fundamental issues in network control and distributed coordination of wireless sensor and robotic networks. The research approach is to exploit intrinsic properties of such systems to ensure stability and high performance despite the deleterious network effects.  

The principal objective of this project is the development of novel control architectures and computationally efficient controller design algorithms for distributed cyber-physical systems with decentralized information infrastructures and limited communication capabilities.  Interest is in distributed cyber-physical systems where the system components are able to communicate with one another.

This research addresses the following fundamental problem in cyber-physical systems: How can we design systems that respond to critical events, such as earthquakes, based on data from large numbers of noisy, community-held sensor devices?  The general goal of our research is to develop theory and practical systems that enable ordinary people to use technology collectively to respond to critical events.