Title: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: A Future Technology

Abstract: Due to technological advances and increasing investment, interest in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as a practical, deployable technological component in many civil applications is rapidly increasing and becoming a reality, as are their capabilities and availability. UAV platforms also offer a unique experimental environment for developing, integrating and experimenting with many artificial intelligence technologies such as automated planners, knowledge representation systems, chronicle recognition systems, etc. In this talk I will describe some of the work being pursued at Linkoping University, Sweden in this area. Focus will be placed on integration of artificial intelligence technologies in such systems in the context of civil and commercial applications. A number of UAV systems developed and deployed by our research group for sophisticated experimental application scenarios will be demonstrated. Challenges and prospects for future UAV systems will also be highlighted.

Biography: Patrick Doherty is a Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Computer and Information Sciences (IDA), Linkoping University, Sweden. He heads the Artificial Intelligence and Integrated Computer Systems Division at IDA and is also director of LinkLab, a research center for future aviation systems. He is an ECCAI fellow and has published numerous articles in the areas of knowledge representation, automated planning, and autonomous UAV systems.