Naomi Ehrich Leonard
Edwin S. Wilsey Professor
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
D-234 Engineering Quadrangle
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544

Phone: (609) 258-5129
Fax: (609) 258-6109
E-mail: naomi@princeton.edu
MAE Faculty web page

New Links

Google scholar citation page or list of publications for access to published articles from the Leonard group

Flocks and Fleets: Collective Motion in Nature and Robotics
Public lecture, October 22, 2009, President's Lecture Series, Princeton University

Robotics in the Dynamical Control Systems Lab, used to study natural and engineered multi-agent systems.
Video of two undergraduates describing their work on the Beluga vehicles in the lab

Flock Logic: A project in human collective motion.
With choreographer Susan Marshall, we explore what emerges when a group of dancers/movers works with the rules governing collective motion in animals.
FlockMaker: Simulator for Collective Motion, a user-friendly tool where you can design and explore local rules and emergent collective motion patterns.

Background

• Short biography and research summary

Research Interests

• Nonlinear control and dynamics
• Multi-agent systems, cooperative control, mobile sensor networks and adaptive ocean sampling
• Collective behavior in animal groups (fish schools, bird flocks)
• Decision dynamics in mixed teams of humans and robots
• Underwater gliders and other autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs)

Research Group

• Students and post-docs
• Research group pictures

Publications

• Google scholar citation page for Leonard
• List of publications

Research Projects

• Remote Imaging of Community Ecology via Animal-borne Wireless Networks -- NSF
• Coordination and Collective Decision Making -- ARO
• The Exploration-Exploitation Dilemma -- Princeton Engineering-Neuroscience Insley-Blair Fund
• Bio-Inspired Autonomous Control for Optimal Exploration and Exploitation in Marine Environments (BIO-EX) -- ONR
• Center for Human and Robot Decision Dynamics (CHARDD) -- AFOSR
• Adaptive Sampling and Prediction (ASAP) -- ONR

News

• List of recent press articles

Research Abstracts from Select Past Lectures

• Cooperative Control and Mobile Sensor Networks in the Ocean
Keynote, 2008 IFAC Workshop on Navigation, Guidance and Control of Underwater Vehicles, Killaloe, Ireland
• Flocks and Fleets: Collective Motion and Sensing Networks in Nature and Robotics
Plenary, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Pasadena, CA
• Spatial Dynamics, Information Flow and Consensus in Fish Schools
Lecture, 2008 Mathematical Biosciences Institute Workshop on Systems Biology of Decision Making, Ohio State University
• Integrating Human and Robot Decision-Making Dynamics
Plenary, 2008 International Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems (MTNS), Virginia Tech

Teaching

• Short Course on Cooperative Control and Mobile Sensor Networks, University of Pisa, 18-20 April, 2007
• MAE 206, Introduction to Engineering Dynamics
• MAE 434 (formerly 444), Modern Control
• MAE 501, Mathematical Methods of Engineering Analysis I
• MAE 542 (formerly 560), Advanced Dynamics
• MAE 570, Optimal Control and Estimation II
• MAE 545 (formerly 573), Nonlinear Control
• ELE 523/MAE 548, Nonlinear Systems Theory
• MAE 549, Geometric Mechanics
• MAT 199, Math Alive, Module 5, "Geometry and Motion Control in Biology and Robotics", Spring 2000

Lab 5 - Java applets that introduce motion control concepts and allow you to work through some examples.
Lecture Notes 5.A (postscript) , (pdf) - Notes associated with the lectures for this module
Lecture Notes 5.B (postscript) , (pdf)
Lecture Notes 5.C (postscript) , (pdf)