Statement of Research Multi-agent Group Behavior

My research is in the area of robotics, computer animation and graphics. A focus of my research deals with integrating aspects of robotic motion planning with animation applications. The main applications include pursuit-evasion scenarios, evacuation planning and motion planning in dynamic and complex environments. We have shown that the behavior of a group of agents can be improved by utilizing many motion planning techniques along with considering other behavioral factors. Our behavioral-based framework allows us to consider the effect on a scenario of many different aspects including type of behaviors, agent capabilities, levels of communication, knowledge of the environment and coordination. By applying motion planning techniques to dynamic and complex environments we are able to handle environment types that had not been considered before as well as make contributions to the foundations of motion planning. Please visit my web page (url above) to see animations and project pages of the work mentioned here.