09:00–09:10
Welcome
09:10–10:00
Session 1: Networked robotics (part I)
AI-Empowered IoT Data Collection via UAV in Rural Areas
Phuc Tinh Vo and Giovanni Giambene (University of Siena, Italy); Paolo Barsocchi (ISTI-CNR, Italy); Antonino Crivello (Institute of Information Science and Technologies – CNR, Italy)
WakeLoc: An Ultra-Low Power, Accurate and Scalable On-Demand RTLS using Wake-Up Radios
Silvano Cortesi, Christian Vogt and Michele Magno (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
10:00–10:30
Coffee Break
10:30–11:30
Keynote
Speaker:
Prof Amanda Prorok
Professor of Collective Intelligence and Robotics
Department of Computer Science and Technology
Cambridge University UK
TITLE: Synthesizing Multi-Robot Policies: From Cooperative Perception to Human-Led Fleet Control
ABSTRACT: How are we to orchestrate large teams of robots? How do we distill global goals into local robot policies? And how do we seamlessly integrate human-led fleet control? Machine learning has revolutionized the way in which we address these questions by enabling us to automatically synthesize agent policies from high-level objectives. In this presentation, I first describe how we leverage data-driven approaches to learn interaction strategies that lead to coordinated and cooperative robot behaviors. I will introduce our work on Graph Neural Networks, and show how we use such architectures to learn multi-agent policies through differentiable communications channels. I present experimental results with mobile robots engaged in cooperative perception, formation control, and human-led path-finding; I also show how the methods scale to very large-scale systems, and how they are capable of modeling complex physical interactions in close-proximity flight with multiple quadrotors.
BIO: Amanda Prorok is Professor of Collective Intelligence and Robotics in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Pembroke College. In her work, she pioneered differentiable communications methods for multi-agent systems, with applications to multi-robot perception and control. Amanda has given invited keynotes at TEDx and ICRA, and has been honored by numerous research awards, including a prestigious ERC Starting Grant. Amanda is an IEEE Senior Member, serves as Associate Editor for Autonomous Robots (AURO) and was the Chair of the 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Multi-Robot and Multi-Agent Systems. Her PhD thesis was awarded the Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) prize for the best thesis at EPFL in Computer Science.
Session 2: Networked robotics (part II)
11:30–12:20
Edge4Drone: Managing Landings and Takeoffs in High-Density Distribution Centers
Lucas de Paula Soares (Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil); Fabiola Martins Campos de Oliveira (Federal University of ABC, Brazil); Carlos Alberto Kamienski (Universidade Federal do ABC, Brazil); Luiz F. Bittencourt (University of Campinas, Brazil)
Task-Oriented Connectivity for Networked Robotics with Generative AI and Semantic Communications
Peizheng Li (Toshiba Europe Ltd., United Kingdom (Great Britain)); Adnan Aijaz (Toshiba Europe Ltd, United Kingdom (Great Britain))
12:20–13:50
Lunch Break
13:50–15:30
Session 3: Applications of Swarm Robotics
SauRON: Smart Surveillance using Robotic Swarms with Optimized Networks
Gaurav Singh, Sunday Amatare and Debashri Roy (The University of Texas Arlington, USA)
A Hierarchical Optimization Framework Using Deep Reinforcement Learning for Task-Driven Bandwidth Allocation in 5G Teleoperation
Narges Golmohammadi (University of Louisville, USA); Madan Mohan Rayguru (J B Speed School of Engineering & University of Louisville, USA); Sabur Baidya (University of Louisville, USA)
Scalable Buoy Networks for IoT-Driven Marine Wildlife Conservation
Michel Fontaine, Mohammad Patel, Chloe Riviere, Clement Sautron and Theo Socha (University of Reunion, Reunion); Tahiry Razafindralambo (University of la Reunion, Reunion); Pierre-Ugo Tournoux (Université de la Réunion, Reunion)
Green Robotic Mixed Reality with Gaussian Splatting
Chenxuan Liu (Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China); He Li (University of Macau, Macao); Zongze Li (Peng Cheng Laboratory, China); Shuai Wang (Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China); Wei Xu (Manifold Tech Limited, China); Kejiang Ye (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China); Derrick Wing Kwan Ng (University of New South Wales, Australia); Cheng-Zhong Xu (University of Macau, China)”