Distributed Learning and Information Dynamics in Networked Autonomous Systems

Professor John Baras (ECE/ISR), ISR Director Eyad Abed (ECE/ISR) and Assistant Professor Nuno Martins(ECE/ISR) will be participating in an Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) MURI, "Distributed Learning and Information Dynamics in Networked Autonomous Systems." Maryland's portion of the award is $2.7 million. Georgia Tech is the lead institution, and Jeff Shamma, who was an ISR Distinguished Lecturer in February 2009, is the principal investigator. This award was made in MURI category 16: Learning Decision Architectures for Intelligent Cooperative Control of Autonomous Systems. The research will set a foundation that enables advanced operations of teams of autonomous vehicles to learn and adapt in uncertain and hostile environments while effectively using communications resources. The research will include studies of learning under sparse communications, game theoretic learning, and on-line formation of desirable network architectures. There will be implications for key problems in social, economic and biological networks.