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I am an assistant professor at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I am a member of the Controls Group at U-M. I lead the Intelligent Robotics and Autonomy Lab (iRAL) at U-M. Previously, I was a research scientist at the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), and the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems (LIDS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I am a recipient of the Best Paper Award in Robot Vision at the 2020 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), and of a Honorable Mention from the 2020 IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L). I was a Best Student Paper Award Finalist at the 2017 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC).
I develop AI algorithms that help robots to understand their surroundings, self-navigate, and collaborate with each other. In broad terms, I care for a trustworthy collaborative autonomy of mobile robots, from self-driving cars to drones to satellites, even when those robots operate in challenging conditions such as unmapped areas, cluttered streets, and adversarial scenarios where attackers can take down some of the cars/drones/satellites.
[CV, Bio | Google Scholar | vtzoumas 
umich.edu (he/him/his) | 3049 François-Xavier Bagnoud Building]
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Trustworthy Collaborative Autonomy:
- Learning for Perception—(Inter)Action Prediction—Control
- Combinatorial, Non-Convex, and Distributed Optimization
- Novel Self-Reconfigurable Robots
Applications:
- Multi-Robot Planning in Adversarial Environments
(e.g., multi-target tracking, surveillance) - Self-Navigation in Interactive, Dynamic Environments
(e.g., self-driving flying cars in cluttered cities) - Robust and Adaptive Self-Reconfigurable Systems/Robots
(e.g., multi-rotor flying robots, satellite networks)
[Team | Research Overview | Past Research | Publications | Awards]
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RECENT News
- 10/01/2021: I proudly welcome 12 students to the Intelligent Robotics and Autonomy Lab (iRAL): 2 Ph.D, 5 M.Sc, and 5 B.Sc. students (including 4 UROPs); see our team here.
- 06/07/2021: Paper Outlier-Robust Estimation: Hardness, Minimally-Tuned Algorithms, and Applications accepted to IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO). With Pasquale Antonante, Heng (Hank) Yang, and Luca Carlone.
- 05/18/21: 2020 Honorable Mention from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters for the paper Graduated Non-Convexity for Robust Spatial Perception: From Non-Minimal Solvers to Global Outlier Rejection. With Heng (Hank) Yang, Pasquale Antonante, and Luca Carlone.
- 05/14/21: Seminar at the University of Michigan, Sigma Gamma Tau Series.
- 05/02/21: Seminar at ETH, Autonomy Talk Series.
- 04/18/21: Paper on Resilient Active Information Acquisition with Teams of Robots accepted to IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO). With Brent Schlotfeldt and George J. Pappas.
- 04/02/21: Seminar at the University of Michigan, Controls Seminars Series.
- 02/19/21: I am an Associate Editor for IEEE/RSJ IROS 2021.
- 02/01/21: MathWorks news article on paper Graduated Non-Convexity for Robust Spatial Perception.
- 01/01/21: MathWorks SLAM implementation of GNC algorithm proposed in paper Graduated Non-Convexity for Robust Spatial Perception.
- 12/13/20: Paper on Robust and Adaptive Sequential Submodular Optimization accepted to IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC). With Ali Jadbabaie and George J. Pappas.
Ithaca | Constantine P. Cavafy (1911) As you set out for Ithaca hope your road is a long one, full of adventures, full of learning. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon —don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you. Hope your road is a long one. [...] Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaca won’t have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you’ll have understood by then what these Ithacas mean. [full poem, in Greek, and translated in English]
Vasileios Tzoumas 