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X-APPLE-TRAVEL-ADVISORY-BEHAVIOR:AUTOMATIC
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DTSTAMP:20260518T124636Z
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260603T111500
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URL;TYPE=URI:https://www.wpi.edu/news/calendar/events/rbe-colloquium-speake
 r-series-professor-athanasios-kapoutsis
SUMMARY:RBE Colloquium Speaker Series: Professor Athanasios Kapoutsis
DESCRIPTION:Overcoming UAV Limitations Through Swarm Intelligence\n\n\n\n  
     \n      \n\n\n\nAbstract: Although UAV technology has profoundly trans
 formed the core operations of numerous industries, critical challenges per
 sist, such as limited battery life, excessive human dependence, and the pr
 essing need for real-time adaptive mission planning. These issues signific
 antly hinder the application of UAV technologies in complex, computational
 ly demanding, and time-consuming missions, ultimately constraining their f
 ull potential. While future advancements in battery systems, hardware, and
  software will mitigate these problems, accelerating the development of sw
 arming technology can exponentially increase adoption and unlock a complet
 ely new set of applications that are currently beyond consideration. AURA 
 Lab attempts to alleviate these limitations by developing algorithms and s
 ystems for the efficient, scalable deployment of multiple UAVs. Naturally,
  this work is organized around three pillars: i) Offline planning, ii) Onl
 ine learning and adaptation, and iii) Dataset acquisition and construction
 . In offline planning, AURA Lab focuses on extracting the maximum value fr
 om available pre-mission information, designing methods for balanced multi
 -UAV coverage, optimal swarm deployment, and efficient inspection of both 
 large areas and scattered targets. In online learning, the goal is to enab
 le UAV swarms to adapt in real time to dynamic environments, changing swar
 m configurations, and evolving mission demands, making them more resilient
  and effective in tasks such as surveillance, precision agriculture, and g
 as-plume tracking. Finally, AURA Lab develops and maintains open UAV datas
 ets to lower the barrier for further research and innovation in the drone 
 ecosystem.\nBio: Athanasios Kapoutsis is an Assistant Professor in the Dep
 artment of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Democritus Univers
 ity of Thrace (DUTH) and the head of the AUtonomous Robotics Agents (AURA)
  Lab. His research interests include, i) inducing autonomy in real-world m
 ulti-robot systems, ii) spanning coverage/exploration path planning for UA
 Vs/UGVs/AUVs, iii) reinforcement learning and multi-agent RL, and iv) larg
 e-scale distributed/adaptive control. During the past years, he has contri
 buted to a broad portfolio of competitively funded R\&D projects spanning 
 EU FP7, H2020 and Horizon Europe programmes, as well as Greek national ini
 tiatives—taking on responsibilities ranging from key technical roles to pr
 oject leadership. Across his work in competitively funded R\&D, he has ser
 ved through three institutional affiliations: the Information Technologies
  Institute (ITI) of the Centre for Research \& Technology Hellas (CERTH), 
 the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the Democri
 tus University of Thrace (DUTH), and the Institute for Language and Speech
  Processing (ILSP) of the Athena Research and Innovation Center (ARC).\n
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