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Professor Gabriele M.T. D'Eleuterio |
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David Beach PhD Candidate |
| I am interested in the application of information-theoretic approaches to the characterization of interacting systems in general and evolutionary systems in particular. My current research involves investigating mutual information in simple evolutionary models with the objective of providing bulk metrics for the description of evolutionary dynamics. I'm also interested in the creation of novel development-based evolutionary algorithms. |
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Paul Grouchy PhD Candidate |
| I am working on using evolutionary algorithms (EAs) to evolve systems of ODEs for robotic control. It is hoped that controllers demonstrating development, learning and strong generalization capabilities can be produced in this manner. |
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Vidya Menon (with Manfredi Maggiore) PhD Candidate |
| My current research involves developing a plant model and a controller for Space Robotics Dragonfly MAV. Dragonflies are among nature's best fliers as they have hovering capabilities and are extremely manoeuvrable, characteristics which are highly desirable in insect sized MAVs. The first step into developing these characteristics for an MAV is to design a controller that regulates attitude in the hovering configuration. To design this controller, I intend to take cues from control mechanisms observed in dragonflies in nature as well nonlinear control techniques. |
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Alexander Smith PhD Candidate |
| I am developing a system that will perform natural landmark recognition. This system is intended to be used part of a navigation system for mobile robots in support of an ISRU mission profile. I am using NVIDIA's CUDA to develop a mutual information-based algorithm for recognizing objects and estimating their poses. The use of mutual information makes the system robust against imperfectly controllable factors such as camera noise and variable lighting conditions. (Personal Website) |
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Peter Szabo PhD Candidate |
| My current research looks into the recreation of the flight mechanisms of dragonflies. The idea is to have as much progress towards creating a dragonfly sized micro aerial vehicle (MAV) that mimics the way real dragonflies take flight - which is the main goal. This is being done by using observations, measurements, and simulations of the kinematics and dynamics of dragonfly flight combined with the properties of advanced materials and new fabrication techniques. |
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Adam Trischler PhD Candidate |
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My goal is to model cognitive information processing in biological systems (brains). I investigate neural networks exhibiting chaotic dynamics, using tools from dynamical systems theory and information theory. It is believed that chaotic reconstruction of mental states will endow robotic controllers with greater adaptability - think reconfigurable robotic hand vs. task-specific gripper. |
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Alexander Farley MASc Candidate |
| My thesis work is in the area of traffic dynamics, regarding local versus global control optimality and the ability of a subset of agents to influence the entire network. Other interests of mine include image-based density estimation/object counting with neural networks and automated internet topic monitoring/analysis. |
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Adam Sniderman (with Mireille E. Broucke) MASc Candidate |
| My research is in the area of multiagent consensus. Many current algorithms can only be used to prove that already-given controllers will solve the consensus problem for a given system, with no prior regard for whether consensus is possible or for analysis of system dynamics. I hope to overcome these constraints by reconstructing consensus as a Restricted Regulator Problem. Using results from geometric control theory, this approach will give direct conditions for consensus in a broad class of systems. |
| Recent PhD Graduates |
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Timothy D. Barfoot (Assistant Professor, UTIAS: Autonomous Space Robotics Lab) Christopher J. Damaren (Professor, UTIAS: Spacecraft Dynamics and Control Group) Ernest J. P. Earon Christopher Langley Alan Morris Inna Sharf (Associate Professor, McGill University: Aerospace Mechatronics Lab) Jekanthan Thangavelautham |
| Recent MASc Graduates | |
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Nader Abu El Samid Cathy Cheung Terence Fu Kenneth Law Nagina Nagrani Carolyn Schurek |
Michel-Alexandre Cardin Francis Frenzel Jonathan Gammell Mustafa Mirza Luke Ng Kris Skonieczny |
| Recent Exchange Students |
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Emmanuel Bassy (Studienarbeit, Weingarten, Germany) Sylvain Beigneux (IFMA, France) Nikolas Trawny (Studienarbeit, Stuttgart, Germany) |
| Recent Summer Students | |
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Heather Armstrong Tommy Liu Difu Shi |
Kristen Facciol Ali Punjani
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