Lincoln Smith - University of Sussex

Contact

Address	Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics Department of Informatics University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QJ United Kingdom
Campus	Chichester III - 3R245 ext. 2664
Email	lincolns@sussex.ac.uk
Phone	+44 (0)1273 872664

My main research area is the visual navigation of autonomous robots. In particular, the use of biological models of insect navigation for direction in the design of algorithms for robotic navigation in large-scale environments.

This work looks to:

To formalise the way in which insects rapidly and efficiently learn visual navigation in complex environments.
To develop general principles and novel classes of algorithms that capture this form of learning.
To demonstrate these algorithms on a range of mobile autonomous robots.
To derive highly generic forms of these algorithms to apply to other classes of sequential learning problems.

I have also collaborated with Matt Quinn and Phil Husbands on a British National Space Centre (BNSC) funded project in the area of multi-robot systems. In particular, the evolution of coordinated and cooperative behaviour in the context of cooperating groups of autonomous robots.

The Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics was created in 1996 as a joint research venture between the schools of Biological Sciences and Cognitive and Computing Sciences at the University of Sussex. Its remit was to explore and exploit the interfaces between biological and computational sciences.
The Sussex Insect Navigation Group, headed by Prof. Tom Collett, has for many years been interested in insect vision and navigation. The lab has been involved in research on desert ants, bees, wood ants and robots, all aimed at understanding the underlying strategies of robust navigation in simple systems.