Events Calendar

PhD Thesis Proposal - Jason Gregory

PhD Thesis Proposal - Jason Gregory

Title: Decision Support Systems for Adaptive Experimental Design in Field Robotics

Abstract:
Field robots - agents that operate in complex, natural settings - have the potential for making major, tangible impact to human-robot teaming, but also face the toughest of challenges because the physical world is an unforgiving place. Experimentation plays an integral role in the research and development of fieldable systems and this must be performed in representative conditions that leverage human supervision to effectively understand capabilities of the system, assess individual components and their interactions, manage risk, and interpret results. Adaptive decision making led by a human is required for the construction of experiments, referred to as experimental design, to use insights gained from previous experiments and overcome the inherent complexity of autonomous field robotic systems and operational environments. Human experimenters, however, inherently have several shortcomings, including an inability to reason over large-scale data, sub-optimal uncertainty estimation, and biased decision making. These shortcomings can produce disastrous outcomes, including the selection of low-value experiments that introduce unnecessary delays in building system understanding as well as the selection of risky experiments that can result in major equipment damage or physical injury. To mitigate the human's drawbacks while boosting their indispensable skill sets, we seek to develop decision support systems (DSS) that can assist an experimenter during the decision making process of experiment design and reduce experimental costs by constructing more informative experiments. In this talk, I will present recent efforts in human-in-the-loop decision making for adaptive experimental design, specifically in the context of field robotics, through the development of applicable DSSs.

Committee:
Satyandra K. Gupta (advisor, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science)
Gaurav Sukhatme (Computer Science)
Heather Culbertson (Computer Science)
Stefanos Nikolaidis (Computer Science)
Quan Nguyen (Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science)

Location: https://usc.zoom.us/j/2562545595?pwd=RnJUdWNTaStveEdQSUFiSjhkL2o5Zz09

Date: Monday, May 2, 2022 at 1-3PM.

WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/2562545595?pwd=RnJUdWNTaStveEdQSUFiSjhkL2o5Zz09

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Lizsl De Leon