Distribution-Matching Multi-Agent Deployment for Coverage

Abstract: In this talk, we will delve into the multifaceted challenge of multi-agent deployment for critical applications such as area surveillance, wireless communication coverage, and data harvesting. Traditional approaches like Voronoi partitioning have dominated this sphere, but we propose a shift towards a more nuanced strategy: distribution-matching deployment. This approach aims to align the spatial distribution of a multi-agent team’s coverage with the distribution of targeted events, by optimizing both the positioning and orientation of agents. Our discussion will pivot around the mathematical underpinnings of this method, incorporating elements of statistical inference to accurately identify areas of interest. From there, we frame our deployment challenges as combinatorial optimization problems, employing techniques like maximum bipartite matching and submodular maximization to achieve efficient solutions. By bridging these mathematical concepts with practical deployment scenarios, our seminar will showcase how these advanced methodologies can offer significant improvements over traditional partitioning methods, driving forward the capabilities of multi-agent systems in real-world applications.

Bio: Solmaz Kia is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), CA, USA. She also has a joint appointment as an associate professor in the Computer Science Department of UCI. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from UCI, in 2009, and her M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, Iran, in 2004 and 2001, respectively. She was a senior research engineer at SySense Inc., El Segundo, CA from Jun. 2009 to Sep. 2010. She held postdoctoral positions in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California San Diego and UCI. She was a recipient of the UC president’s post-doctoral fellowship in 2012-2014, an NSF CAREER award in 2017, and the best CSM paper award in 2021. She is a senior member of IEEE. Dr. Kia is an associate editor for Automatica, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems and IEEE Open Journal of Control Systems. Her main research interests, in a broad sense, include distributed optimization/coordination/estimation, nonlinear control theory, and probabilistic robotics navigation and motion planning.