Multi-agent systems inspired by bat swarms: modeling and experiments
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department Seminar Series
08/01 (Friday) 11:00 am – Noon LC433
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Multi-agent systems inspired by bat swarms: modeling and experiments
Dr. Nicole Abaid
Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics
Virginia Tech
Multi-agent systems, which distribute information and action over many interacting units, are increasingly common in engineering applications. As a result, engineers across disciplines are challenged to design coordination strategies to enable these teams to achieve common goals. Such large-scale coordination tasks are well executed in nature by animal groups exhibiting collective behavior, such as fish schools and bird flocks, where complex structures emerge from decisions based on local information without a centralized leader. Among these groups, bat swarms stand out as a unique example, since the echolocation they use for navigation and hunting is an active form of sensing and thus can be intercepted by their peers. Unlike groups that use passive sensing such as vision, bat swarms may be able to achieve types of collective behavior applicable to engineered systems using active sensing, such as AUV teams using sonar. In this talk, we develop a model for multi-agent systems that incorporates active sensing inspired by bat swarms and study it through numerical simulations. Towards the goal of validating this model against animal groups, a data acquisition system for capturing 3D bat flight trajectories and ultrasound will also be presented.
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Biosketch
Nicole Abaid received her bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003 and the University of Kansas in 2008, respectively, and her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University in 2012. Since August 2012, she has worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on dynamic systems, animal behavior, and bio-inspired mechatronics.