Elena M. Vella
Seminar Information
Trust between humans and multi-agent robotic swarms may be analyzed using human preferences. These preferences are expressed by an individual as a sequence of ordered comparisons between pairs of swarm behaviors. An individual’s preference graph can be formed from this se- quence. In addition, swarm behaviors may be mapped to a feature vector space. We formulate a linear optimization problem to locate a trusted behavior in the feature space. Extending to human teams, we define a novel distinctiveness metric using a sparse optimization formulation to cluster similar individuals from a collection of individuals’ labeled pairwise preferences. The case of anonymized unlabeled pairwise preferences is also examined to find the average trusted behavior and minimum covariance bound, providing insights into group cohesion. A user study was conducted, with results suggesting that individuals with similar trust profiles can be clustered to facilitate human-swarm teaming.
Elena Vella is a PhD candidate with the Mechatronics Department at the University of Melbourne. Elena is working in the field of robotics and control theory with a specific focus on multi-agent autonomous systems. Elena’s research involves the collaboration of different vehicle types and humans operating over different levels of autonomy, computing capabilities and time-scales. As an illustrating example, Elena has developed a trust framework for human swarm interaction, this will be implemented in the Science Gallery Melbourne exhibit Sacrifice. Preliminary findings from the human swarm trust research are being presented at ACC. In addition, Elena is currently developing a multi-vehicle testbed of ground vehicles and a virtual reality simulation system. Elena has experience with quadrotor aerial vehicles supported with motion capture and virtual reality instrumentation. Elena is passionate about building strong partnerships through interdisciplinary collaborations between different faculties to deliver innovation in engineering and research.