Title: Attention-Driven Software Architecture for Autonomous Robotic Agents

Speaker: Hyoseung Kim

Abstract: While there has been significant progress in developing autonomous systems, challenges still remain in effectively processing vast amounts of sensor data and making timely decisions, especially for small robotic agents with limited computing power. In this talk, I will introduce our recent project aimed at addressing this issue. The primary goal of this project is to create an attention-driven software architecture that can identify and prioritize critical information from sensors, enabling timely decision-making while considering resource constraints and uncertainties in the environment. This architecture is designed to holistically optimize computation scheduling, perception, and planning, with capabilities to adapt to changes in context and anticipate future actions. Our research tasks involve context adaptive scheduling of autonomous computation pipelines, learning-based perception to anticipate future actions in dynamic environments, and motion planning and decision making based on anticipated actions in the presence of uncertainty. I will share preliminary results motivating our research, and discuss expected technical accomplishments and their potential to tackle fundamental challenges associated with time-sensitive scenarios in resource-constrained autonomous systems.

Short Bio: Hyoseung Kim is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). He is also serving as the Chair of the Computer Engineering Program at UCR. He received the PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2016, and the MS and BS degrees in Computer Science from Yonsei University, Korea, in 2007 and 2005, respectively. His research interests are in real-time embedded and cyber-physical systems, autonomous systems, and smart sensing, with a focus on the intersection of systems software, hardware platforms, and analytical techniques. His research projects have been supported by NSF, ONR, DoD, DoJ, USDA/NIFA, etc. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the Fulbright Scholarship Award. His research contributions have been recognized with Best Paper Awards at RTAS and RTCSA, and Best Paper Nominations at EMSOFT and ICCPS. For more information, please visit https://www.ece.ucr.edu/~hyoseung/.