Office of Naval Research Autonomous Systems Communications

Dr. Leonardo Bobadilla is leading a new Office of Naval Research (ONR) award as sole PI, “End-to-End Scalable Collaboration for Autonomous Systems with Highly Disadvantaged Communications.” The program will address challenges the Navy faces in the future, such as how intelligent autonomous systems (IAS) can solve tasks under extremely low-bandwidth conditions, and how IAS teams plan missions using different communication modalities with rich geometry and water channel communications models.

Concerning the aims of his research project, Dr. Bobadilla stated, “I [am] addressing three research questions of key interest to the U.S. Navy: First, how can IAS solve tasks under extreme low-bandwidth conditions? Secondly, how can IAS teams plan missions by using different communication modalities with rich geometry and water channel communication models? Finally, how can we reduce the time and risks in IAS team deployments in coastal environments?”

Dr. Bobadilla is addressing these questions through three research thrusts. He will solve the autonomy tasks with Sublinear communications, then transition to a novel multi-robot control approach based on

emerging communication modalities. Finally, he will develop a “Sim-to-Scale-to-Real for Heterogeneous IAS Networks” by developing an experimental study case. Expected outcomes include new formulations, algorithms, implementations, scientific publications, software packages, models, hardware prototypes, experimental workflows, and demonstrations.

The research will also explore how to reduce the time and risks in IAS deployments in coastal environments. Intelligent Autonomous Systems, including Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs), Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), and Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) hold promise to form the backbone of future missions for the Navy.

Dr. Bobadilla will receive $450,000 over the next three years to conduct research on this project.