Multi-agent control and learning for autonomous systems

 with Mushuang Liu, University of Missouri
Thursday, February 13, 10:00 – 11:00 AM
310 Kelly Hall

Modern complex systems often involve multiple interacting agents in a shared environment, e.g., transportation systems, power systems, swarm robotics, and human-robot interactions. Controlling these multi-agent systems (MASs) requires the characterization of agents’ interactions to account for their interdependent self-interests and coupled agents’ constraints such as collision avoidance and/or limited shared resources. To enable interaction awareness and human-like reasoning processes, game-theoretic control has been explored in the recent development of autonomous systems operating in multi-agent environments. However, fundamental challenges, including solution existence, algorithm convergence, scalability, and incomplete information, still remain to be addressed before the game-theoretic approaches could be sufficiently practical to be employed in a broad range of autonomous system applications. Possible solutions to addressing these challenges will be discussed in this talk, using autonomous driving as an application example.

Mushuang Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Missouri (MU), Columbia, MO. Before she joined MU in August 2022, she worked as a Postdoc in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 2021-2022; and received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, in 2020. Her research interests include control and learning for multi-agent systems with applications to automotive systems, aerospace systems, and robotics. Her research has led to over 30 publications and various awards including the 2024 DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA). She is currently serving as an Associate Editor for ISA Transactions and serving on the Early Career Advisory Board for Control Engineering Practice.

Host: Kevin Kochersberger