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Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 2002
M.S.
University of Pennsylvania, 1999
B.S. Rutgers
University, Magna Cum Laude 1997
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Joel Esposito:
is an Associate Professor (CV) in
the System Engineering Department at the United States Naval Academy. He
teaches courses in Robotics and Control Systems.
Pedagogically, his current efforts are focused on developing a new course on
autonomous vehicles (land, sea, and air). His research focuses on the use
of algorithmic and numerical tools for designing and analyzing mobile robot
motion controllers.
He is the author of over 35 peer reviewed publications.
Prior to joining the
faculty in 2002, he spent several
years as a graduate research assistant at the University of Pennsylvania
working with Vijay Kumar at the GRASP Laboratory. During those years he
worked on a variety of DARPA projects, participated in the development of a programming
language, CHARON, and held visiting appointments at Lockheed Martin, Sandia National
Laboratories and Boston University.
Academic
Genealogy: Ferdinand Freudenstein -->
Bernie Roth
--> Kenneth Waldron --> Vijay Kumar
About USNA:
The Naval Academy is a 4 year
undergraduate institution conferring the Bachelors of Science degree in a
variety of accredited majors. Historically the Academy faculty has maintained a
50-50 civilian-officer ratio. Students receive tuition waivers in
exchange to commit to serve as an officer in the Navy or Marine Corps for at
least 5 years. The ABET Accredited Systems
Engineering Major is the among the most popular majors at the Academy. It
is actually an applied control systems department. At its core is a 5
course sequence in feedback control. Upper level electives include
embedded computing, modern control, communication systems and four courses in
robotics.
Looking
for someone else? Perhaps you are looking from my wife's
website? She is a
Dentist in Annapolis and Arnold, Maryland
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Cooperative Manipulation: We study how
large groups of robots can work together
to move big objects
in concert, without relying on a centralized leader. Army
ants transporting prey provide a proof
of concept in nature. Our ultimate goal is to field
a team of autonomous tug boats that can tow disabled ships.
Watch our
video documentary or see our publications below for
details.
I work with Matthew Feemster and CAPT Jack Nicholson at USNA.
This project is
funded by ONR.
Mobile Wireless Networks: Imagine a large swarm
of mobile robots that have to exchange information to complete
their task. Low power ad hoc wireless technologies such as
BlueTooth and IR require that the sender and receiver are within
a certain range of each other. In addition, signal
strength improves if the sender and receiver maintain line of
sight. These two constraints restrict how the entire
group can move. VIDEO1,
VIDEO2,
Rapidly Exploring Random Trees: This popular
robot motion planning algorithm can be used to vet complex
control systems as well, by trying to find scenarios under which
control software will fail -- exposing the bugs in the code.
One of the goals of the project is to adapt the original
algorithm for this purpose, and to predict the convergence rate
of the algorithm. Here is a
video of the algorithm
discovering how an intruder can get past a team of robot
security guards.
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MTIC: I wrote
(with Owen Barton) the
Matlab
Toolbox for the iRobot Create which allows you to control your Roomba or
Create Robot from Matlab. We are still in the Beta Version.
Computers in Education Journal
(ASEE): I am the editor-in-chief of the
Computers in Education Journal, a publication of the
American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). The
purpose of the journal is to provide a forum to share new
pedagogical approaches to using all facets of computing
(programming, software, hardware, embedded, etc.) in engineering
education. Please direct all submissions to ed-pub (at)
crosslink (dot) net
Unmanned Ground Vehicle
Competition: I am the faculty adviser (with Brad
Bishop) for the Naval Academy's entry into the AUVSI's
Intelligent Unmanned Ground
Vehicle Student Competition. We are currently in
the process of constructing our vehicle. Updates to
follow.
University Service:
I serve on the Faculty Teaching and Service Award Committees.
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Courses Taught:
Pedagogical Articles:
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J.M. Esposito, M.G. Feemster, and J.M. Watkins, “Role
of a Matlab real-time hardware interface within a systems modeling course”,
Proceedings of the America Society of Engineering Education, June 2004
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J.M. Esposito, S. Avramov, R. DeMoyer and S.
Parikh, “Promoting and assessing intuitive
understanding in a junior-level modeling course”, Proceedings of the
America Society of Engineering Education, June 2005
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Swarm Manipulation:
- J.M. Esposito. "Distributed
grasp synthesis for swarm manipulation", In IEEE Conference
on Robotics and Automation, pages 1489-1494, 2008.
- M.G. Feemster, J.M. Esposito,
and E.T. Smith. Cooperative
manipulation on the water. In IEEE Conference on Robotics
and Automation, pages 1501-1506, 2008.
- J.M. Esposito, E.T.Smith,
M.G. Feemster, “Autonomous Tugboat Swarms”, Workshop on
Swarming in Natural and Engineered Systems, Philadelphia, PA,
May 2007
- E.T. Smith, M.G. Feemster, and J.M. Esposito, “Swarm
Manipulation of an Unactuated Surface Vessel”, IEEE Southeastern
Symposium on Systems Theory, March 2007, P. 16-20
- M.G. Feemster, J.M. Esposito
and J. Nicholson, “Manipulation
of large objects by swarms of autonomous marine vehicles: Part I
-- Rotation”, Proceedings of the IEEE Southeastern Symposium
on Systems Theory, p255-259, March 2006
Multi-Robot (Swarm) Motion Planning and Control:
- J.M. Esposito and T.W. Dunbar,
“Wireless constraints in swarm
motion planning”, IEEE International Conference on Robotics
and Automation, May 2006, p. 946-952 (SLIDES
, VIDEO1,
VIDEO2, from ICRA 2006)
- J.M. Esposito, and M. Kim, “Using
formal modeling with an automated analysis tool to design and parametrically
analyze a multi-robot coordination protocol: a case study” ,
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Part A,
Systems. Vol 37, Issue 3, May 2007 Page(s): 285-297
- R. Alur, A. Das, J.M. Esposito, R. Fierro, Y. Hur,
G. Grudic, V. Kumar, I. Lee, J. P. Ostrowski, G. J. Pappas, J. Southall, J.
Spletzer, and C. Taylor “A framework and architecture for multi-robot
coordination.”, International Journal of Robotics Research, Vol. 21,
No.10-11, p. 977-995, Oct-Nov. 2002
- R. Alur, T. Dang, J.M. Esposito, Y. Hur, F.
Ivancic, V. Kumar, I. Lee, P. Mishra, G. J. Pappas, and O. Sokolsky,
“Hierarchical modeling and analysis of embedded systems” Proceedings of
the IEEE, Vol. 91, No. 1, p.11-28, January 2003.
- J.M.
Esposito and V.Kumar, "
A method for modifying
closed-loop motion plans at runtime",
International Conference on
Robotics and Automation, Washington DC, 2002 Finalist for the
Best Paper Award
- J.M. Esposito and V. Kumar, “A
tutorial on mobile robot programming, using a Hybrid Systems
framework”, an invited paper for the Robot Programming Workshop,
IEEE Intl. Conf. On Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2002),
Washington, DC, May 2002
- K. A. McIsaac, A. K. Das, J.M.
Esposito, and James P. Ostrowski, “A hierarchical, modal
approach to hybrid systems control of autonomous robots”,
Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. On Intelligent Robots and
Systems, p1020-1025, v.2, November 2000
- J.M. Esposito and V. Kumar,
“Closed loop motion plans for mobile robots”, Proceedings of the
IEEE Intl. Conf. On Robotics and Automation, p2777-2782, v 3,
May 2000
Enhancements to Rapidly Exploring Random Trees with applications
to verification:
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J.W. Kim, J.M. Esposito and V.Kumar, “RRT
enhancements” International Journal of Robotics Research, Vol 15 Issue 12, p
1257-1272, Dec 2006
J. Kim, J.M. Esposito, and V. Kumar,
"An RRT-Based Algorithm for Testing and Validating Multi-Robot Controllers"
in
Robotics: Science and Systems,
Boston, MA, July 2005
J.M. Esposito and J. Kim, "Adaptive
Sample Bias for Rapidly Exploring Random Trees with Application to Test
Generation", American Control Conference,
Portland, OR, June 2005.
J.M. Esposito, J. Kim, and
V. Kumar
"Adaptive
RRT’s for Validating Hybrid Robotic Control Systems", Workshop
on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics, Zeist, Netherlands, July 2004.
C. Belta, J.M. Esposito,
J.Kim and V. Kumar, "Computational Techniques for
Analysis of Genetic Network Dynamics", International Journal of
Robotics Research: Special Invited Issue on Robotics Techniques Applied to
Computational Biology, 24(2-3) p219, 2005
Numerical Methods for Simulating
Hybrid Systems:
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J.M. Esposito and V.Kumar,
"A State Event Detection
Algorithm for Numerically Simulating Hybrid Systems with Model Singularities",
ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, Volume 17, Issue 1, p.
1-22, January 2007
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J.M. Esposito and V.Kumar, "
An
Asynchronous Integration and Event Detection Algorithm for Simulating
Multi-Agent Hybrid Systems", ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer
Simulation, Vol. 14, No. 4, Oct. 2004: 363-388.
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J.M. Esposito, G. Pappas, and V. Kumar, “Accurate
event detection for hybrid systems”, in Hybrid Systems: Computation and
Control (HSCC2001), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 2034,
Springer, March 2001 p. 204-217.
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J.M. Esposito and V. Kumar, “Efficient dynamic
simulation of robotic systems with hierarchy”, in IEEE Int. Conf. Robotics
and Automation, , p. 2818-2823, v.3, May 2001.
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J.M. Esposito, G. Pappas, and V. Kumar,
“Multi-agent hybrid system simulation” Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on
Decision and Control, p78-785, v.1, Dec 2001.
For a complete list see
CV.
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