AFMC Command News

SuperBot research may offer information benefits to Air Force

  • Published
  • By Maria Callier
  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research Public Affairs
ARLINGTON, Va. --  The goal of making robots learn from the environment seems intuitively simple but, in fact, it requires rigid investigation and mathematical calculations.

Potential benefits to the Air Force are why the Air Force Office of Scientific Research is funding a study to improve SuperBot's prediction capabilities and creating algorithms to detect surprise in "Surprise-Based Learning."

AFOSR's Maj. Amy Magnus, along with program manager Dr. David Luginbuhl, are overseeing the efforts of Dr. Wei-Min Shen. Dr. Shen is the director of Polymorphic Robotics Laboratory, the associate director of the Centre for Robotics and Embedded Systems, and a research associate professor in computer science at the University of Southern California who is leading the team in SuperBot research.

SuperBot is a modular, multifunctional and reconfigurable robot. Conceptually, it is a set of individual robots that work together to move around and solve problems

"This research directly supports the Air Force vision of information dominance and the development of 'anywhere, anytime' operational readiness by enhancing the warfighter's ability to assimilate new information readily in a distributed fashion," Dr. Shen said. 

"Future robots will be able to change their configurations and adapt to new and unexpected situations: after disasters, when exploring space, the ocean and in operations in hazardous environments," he explained. "They will be resilient to damage they suffer because of their self-healing properties."

According to AFOSR program manager Dr. Bob Herklotz, NASA has interest in SuperBots. The results of the AFOSR program are incorporated into a larger scale SuperBot project that NASA is funding.

By funding programs like this one for basic research in controlling self-reconfigurable SuperBots, (http://www.isi.edu/robots ) and Surprise-Based Learning, AFOSR continues to expand the horizon of scientific knowledge through its leadership and management of the Air Force's basic research program.