~~(The talk will be given in English)

Speaker:  Prof. Gal A. Kaminka
                  Computer Science Department & Gonda Brain Research Center, Bar Ilan University

Sunday, November 22nd, 2015
15:00 - 16:00
Room 011, Kitot Bldg., Faculty of Engineering
No robot is an island, no team an archipelago
Abstract
We live in opportune times. The centuries-old dreams of creating intelligent, programmable automatons—robots—are becoming reality. Recent years are seeing dramatically growing interest in robotics, by scientists and practitioners alike. Robots—from the molecular scale to tank-size—seem to appear everywhere: in production lines, in the battlefield, in hospitals, in warehouses, in homes, in fields; on the ground, on water, and in the air.
In this talk, I argue that to accelerate and maximize the impact of robotics, robots should operate in teams, rather than in isolation. Moreover, I argue that effective robot teams must dynamically adjust their teamwork, instead of relying on rigid pre-planned coordination schemes. This is not a mere philosophical argument: I will present algorithms, data structures, and computational techniques for facilitating such teamwork, and discuss analytical guarantees and empirical results that demonstrate the effectiveness of these contributions in a variety of cooperative robot teams, from the molecular to the vehicle scale; robot teams which move in formations, explore urban areas, play soccer, and patrol Israel's borders.
As a final note, I will also argue that what is true for robots, is true for roboticists. Accelerating the impact of robotics requires leaving behind rigid disciplinary bounds and pre-established division of labor within academic circles and in practice. Instead, roboticists should embrace multi-discplinary collaborations, opening up to biology, psychology, economics, and sociology as sources of inspiration and targets of influence.

About the speaker: 
Gal A. Kaminka is a professor at the computer science department and the brain sciences research center, at Bar Ilan University (Israel), where he chairs the Bar Ilan University Robotics Consortium, and his MAVERICK research group. His research expertise includes multi-agent and multi-robot systems, teamwork and coordination, behavior and plan recognition, and modeling social behavior. He received his PhD from the University of Southern California (2000), spent time as a post-doctorate fellow at Carnegie Mellon University (until 2002), and a year as a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2012).  Prof. Kaminka was awarded an IBM faculty award and top places at international robotics competitions. He served as the program chair of the 2008 Israeli Conference on Robotics, and the program co-chair of the 2010 Int'l Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS). He has served on the international executive bodies of IFAAMAS (International Foundation of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems), the RoboCup Federation, and AAAI (Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence). He is the author or co-author of over 150 publications and 7 patents. He is the 2013 recipient of the Israeli national Landau Prize in exact sciences.

Prof.Jacques Ohayon

Professor of Mechanical Engineering

1 Laboratory TIMC-DyCTiM, University Joseph-Fourier, CNRS UMR 5525, In3S, Grenoble, France

2 Engineering School Polytech Annecy-Chambיry, University of Savoie Mont-Blanc, Chambיry, France

Email: Jacques.Ohayon@imag.fr

Website: http://membres-timc.imag.fr/Jacques.Ohayon/

Biomechanics of Coronary Atherosclerotic Plaque Rupture:

Progress, Challenges and New Directions

The aims of Prof. Ohayon’s research on Cardiovascular Biomechanics are to understand the

evolution of atherosclerotic plaque vulnerability and to increase knowledge of the plaque

growth process through the combined use of mechanical modeling based on the nonlinear

continuum mechanics theory, finite element method, together with clinical, pathologhical and

biological investigations. On 2009, his group demonstrating that it was possible to reconstruct

fully automatically the elasticity map of an atherosclerotic plaque based on an in vivo

intravascular ultrasound sequence. On 2011, Dr Ohayon underlined, for the first time, the

importance of local arterial wall stiffness in the development of atherosclerosis and showed that

arterial wall-strain stiffening might, in addition to low endothelial shear stress, be a precondition

for the development of atherosclerosis. Today, he coordinates an interdisciplinary international

scientific consortium (Canada-Spain-France-Japan-Switzerland-USA) on the Biomechanics of

Atherosclerosis Plaque that he initiated in 2007 and with which he already published more than

40 collaborative studies.

Abstract of his presentation: The leading cause of major morbidity and mortality in most

countries around the world is atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, most commonly caused by

the rupture of a vulnerable plaque (VP). The challenge for the new generation of in vivo clinical

imaging methods is that prediction of the VP rupture requires not only an accurate description

of plaque morphology, but also a precise knowledge of mechanical properties of plaque

constituents. Indeed, such knowledge will likely allow a precise evaluation of the thin-cap fibroatheroma

peak stress amplitude, which is a reliable predictor of VP rupture. The clinical success

of a surgical intervention depends on knowledge of whether a lesion is at risk for rupture and

can be responsible for the development of neurological or cardiovascular events, respectively.

The medical history and paraclinical tests are sometimes insufficient to resolve this uncertainty.

Hence, it is essential to develop, test and validate novel invasive and noninvasive clinical

diagnostic methods based on continuum mechanics theory combining strain and elasticity

reconstruction techniques for a better in vivo evaluation of the risk of vulnerable carotid and

coronary plaque ruptures. The proposed imaging method appears promising for the evaluation

of VP rupture. Furthermore, the performance for the stabilization of VP using new treatment

strategies could be investigated by using such imaging technique.

ההרצאה תתקיים ביום שלישי 24.11.15.

נפגש ב 13:45 לשיחה וכיבוד, ההרצאה תחל בשעה 14:00

 בחדר 206, בניין כתות, אוניברסיטת תל אביב

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