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Bah! Humbug!
-- Ebeneezer Scrooge
Bah! Humbug! Party FAQ
Map to the House

My Likes and Interests

I have always been interested in the areas of computer representations of knowledge. I also like getting away from all those computers and spending time camping, hiking, and canoeing. Both my wife and I are looking forward to (in my case) exploring, and ( in her case) re-exploring the east coast.

New stuff -- E-Books

In the process of helping a friend work on a project to address the need for up to date school books in under-financed schools, I started playing around with electronic books. As a result I'm working on some software that will semi-automatically convert Project Gutenberg text files into Microsoft Reader files.

For more information see my E-BOOK Link.

Storm Chasing

Yes, we are some of those insane people who would hop in the car ( a beat up 1985 Ford Bronco II) at the drop of a hailstone, ( actually, we used the online radar from Denver) and hunt tornados.

Charlottesville was described by Thomas Jefferson as "the Eden of the world", I suspect he was not a storm chaser. You can get a view of the C'ville radar for comparison. We still take off every May and chase storms in the midwest, taking photos, and having fun. For more details, and some photos go to the Storm Chasing Info pages.

Current Research

My Ph.d. research is the the domain of planning under uncertainty, with a focus on planning for autonomous robots. The core of my research is incorporating uncertainty into planners for mobile robots, to enable them to function more effectively in an uncertain, dynamic world.

One of the demonstration domains in my thesis focuses on the deployment of mobile robots to provide sensor coverage of a dynamic area of interest. The goal is to provide position data about targets in a spatial domain which is evoling over time, and in response to environmental changes. The planning system is responsible for determining the number and position of sensor/locator robots to provide the 'optimal' coverage of the current area, and to re-position the robots as the area of interest, and the positions of the targets changes.

One application area is in the adaptive deployment of localization beacons to act as landmarks for other robots. One current proposal is to use a Robotic Survey Group (RSG) to facilitate the robotic cleanup of hazardous waste spills (non-technical description), especially in partially engineered environments.

Previous Research

The badge is from my previous research job at the Medical Automation Research Center (MARC). The center is developing robotic systems to automate the analysis and handling of medical samples, as well as investigating the use of mobile robots for home health care. These enviroments provide exceptional possibilities for evaluating the ability of automated planners to succeed in the face of uncertain and dynamic environments.

Publications List

Critiques of Planning Papers

Living with Robots - Building, Training a Household Robot

The Fifi pages

Personal Robotics Cye

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Last Modified: Dec 22, 2000