Alfred M. Bruckstein

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• Professor
• Professor at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

A team of identical and oblivious ant-like agents – a(ge)nts – leaving pheromone traces, are programmed to jointly patrol an area modeled as a graph. They perform this task using simple local interactions, while also achieving the important byproduct of partitioning the graph into roughly equal-sized disjoint sub-graphs. Each a(ge)nt begins to oper...

Standard convolutions are prevalent in image processing and deep learning, but their fixed kernel design limits adaptability. Several deformation strategies of the reference kernel grid have been proposed. Yet, they lack a unified theoretical framework. By returning to a metric perspective for images, now seen as two-dimensional manifolds equipped...

This paper introduces a novel bio-mimetic approach for distributed control of robotic swarms, inspired by the collective behaviors of swarms in nature such as schools of fish and flocks of birds. The agents are assumed to have limited sensory perception, lack memory, be Identical, anonymous, and operate without interagent explicit communication. De...

Consider a given planar circular region, in which there is an unknown number of smart mobile evaders. We wish to detect evaders using a line formation of sweeping agents whose total sensing length is predetermined. We propose procedures for designing spiral sweeping protocols that ensure the successful completion of the task, thus deriving conditio...

We study the following problem in elementary robotics: can a mobile agent with $b$ bits of memory, which is able to sense only locations at Manhattan distance $V$ or less from itself, patrol a $d$-dimensional grid graph? We show that it is impossible to patrol some grid graphs with $0$ bits of memory, regardless of $V$, and give an exact characteri...

Several distributed algorithms are presented for the exploration of unknown indoor regions by a swarm of flying, energy constrained agents. The agents, which are identical, autonomous, anonymous and oblivious, uniformly cover the region and thus explore it using predefined action rules based on locally sensed information and the energy level of the...

Consider a given planar circular region, in which there is an unknown number of smart mobile evaders. We wish to detect evaders using a line formation of sweeping agents whose total sensing length is predetermined. We propose procedures for designing spiral sweeping protocols that ensure the successful completion of the task, thus deriving conditio...

Traditional signal processing methods relying on mathematical data generation models have been cast aside in favour of deep neural networks, which require vast amounts of data. Since the theoretical sample complexity is nearly impossible to evaluate, these amounts of examples are usually estimated with crude rules of thumb. However, these rules onl...

Assume that inside an initial planar area there are smart mobile evaders attempting to avoid detection by a team of sweeping searching agents. All sweepers detect evaders with fan-shaped sensors, modeling the field of view of real cameras. Detection of all evaders is guaranteed with cooperative sweeping strategies, by setting requirements on sweepe...

Intelligent robotic systems are becoming ever more present in our lives across a multitude of domains such as industry, transportation, agriculture, security, healthcare and even education. Such systems enable humans to focus on the interesting and sophisticated tasks while robots accomplish tasks that are either too tedious, routine or potentially...

Traditional signal processing methods relying on mathematical data generation models have been cast aside in favour of deep neural networks, which require vast amounts of data. Since the theoretical sample complexity is nearly impossible to evaluate, these amounts of examples are usually estimated with crude rules of thumb. However, these rules onl...

Neural networks are omnipresent, but remain poorly understood. Their increasing complexity and use in critical systems raises the important challenge to full interpretability. We propose to address a simple well-posed learning problem: estimating the radius of a centred pulse in a one-dimensional signal or of a centred disk in two-dimensional image...

Iterative techniques are a well-established tool in modern imaging sciences, allowing to address complex optimization problems via sequences of simpler computational processes. This approach has been significantly expanded in recent years by iterative designs where explicit solutions of optimization subproblems were replaced by black-box applicatio...

Assume that inside a given planar circular region, there are smart mobile evaders, that we would like to detect using sweeping agents. We assume that the agents total sensing resources are a line sensor of predetermined length, which is divided between the swarm’s agents. We propose procedures for designing cooperative sweeping processes that guara...

The goal of this research is to devise guaranteed defense policies that allow to protect a given region from the entrance of smart mobile invaders by detecting them using a team of defending agents equipped with identical line sensors. By designing cooperative defense strategies that ensure all invaders are detected, conditions on the defenders' sp...

We consider the general problem of geometric task allocation, wherein a large, decentralised swarm of simple mobile agents must detect the locations of tasks in the plane and position themselves nearby. The tasks are represented by an a priori unknown demand profile $\Phi(x,y)$ that determines how many agents are needed in each location. The agents...

We present algorithms for uniformly covering an unknown indoor region with a swarm of simple, anonymous and autonomous mobile agents. The exploration of such regions is made difficult by the lack of a common global reference frame, severe degradation of radio-frequency communication, and numerous ground obstacles. We propose addressing these challe...

We consider several algorithms for exploring and filling an unknown, connected region, by simple, airborne agents. The agents are assumed to be identical, autonomous, anonymous and to have a finite amount of memory. The region is modeled as a connected sub-set of a regular grid composed of square cells. The algorithms described herein are suited fo...

We study a combinatorial problem inspired by the following scenario: fully autonomous vehicles drive on a multi-lane ($m \geq 2$) road. Each vehicle heads to its own destination and is allowed to exit the road only through a single designated off-ramp lane. However, an individual vehicle has a severely limited memory and sensing capabilities, and,...

We study the collective motion of autonomous mobile agents in a ringlike environment. The agents’ dynamics are inspired by known laboratory experiments on the dynamics of locust swarms. In these experiments, locusts placed at arbitrary locations and initial orientations on a ring-shaped arena are observed to eventually all march in the same directi...

We consider the emergent behavior of a group of mobile agents guided by an exogenous broadcast signal. The agents’ dynamics is modelled by single integrators and they are assumed oblivious to their own position, however they share a common orientation (i.e. they have compasses). The broadcast control, a desired velocity vector, is detected by arbit...

We study the collective motion of autonomous mobile agents on a ringlike environment. The agents’ dynamics is inspired by known laboratory experiments on the dynamics of locust swarms. In these experiments, locusts placed at arbitrary locations and initial orientations on a ring-shaped arena are observed to eventually all march in the same directio...

This book presents the latest findings in the areas of data management and smart computing, machine learning, big data management, artificial intelligence, and data analytics, along with advances in network technologies. The book is a collection of peer-reviewed research papers presented at Fifth International Conference on Data Management, Analyti...

An agent with constant speed unicycle kinematics senses only the bearing towards a target and pursues it, guided by a steering control law proportional to the bearing-angle to the target. The target’s speed is equal to that of the chasing agent while it moves at a constant velocity. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of this unicycle purs...

We compute the exact value of the least “relative perimeter” of a shape $S$, with a given area, contained in a unit square; the relative perimeter of $S$ being the length of the boundary of $S$ that does not touch the border of the square.

Suppose in a given planar region, there are smart mobile evaders and we want to detect them using sweeping agents. We assume that the agents have line sensors of equal length. We propose procedures for designing cooperative sweeping processes that ensure successful completion of the task, thereby deriving conditions on the sweeping velocity of the...

AntAlate is a software framework for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) autonomy, designed to streamline and facilitate the work of application developers, particularly in deployment of Multi-Agent Robotic Systems (MARS). We created AntAlate in order to bring our research in the field of multi-agent systems from theoretical results to both advanced simu...

We revisit here a fundamental result on planar triangulations, namely that the flip distance between two triangulations is upper-bounded by the number of proper intersections between their straight-segment edges. We provide a complete and detailed proof of this result in a slightly generalised setting using a case-based analysis that fills several...

Suppose in a given planar circular region, there are smart mobile evaders and we want to find them using sweeping agents. We assume the sweeping agents are in a line formation whose total length is predetermined. We propose procedures for designing a sweeping process that ensures the successful completion of the task, thereby deriving conditions on...

Suppose in a given planar region, there are smart mobile evaders and we want to detect them using sweeping agents. We assume that the agents have line sensors of equal length. We propose procedures for designing cooperative sweeping processes that ensure successful completion of the task, thereby deriving conditions on the sweeping velocity of the...

Storage systems often rely on multiple copies of the same compressed data, enabling recovery in case of binary data errors, of course, at the expense of a higher storage cost. In this paper, we show that a wiser method of duplication entails great potential benefits for data types tolerating approximate representations, like images and videos. We p...

Holographic representations of data enable distributed storage with progressive refinement when the stored packets of data are made available in any arbitrary order. In this paper, we propose and test patch-based transform coding holographic sensing of image data. Our proposal is optimized for progressive recovery under random order of retrieval of...

Random pairwise encounters often occur in large populations, or groups of mobile agents, and various types of local interactions that happen at encounters account for emergent global phenomena. In particular, in the fields of swarm robotics, sociobiology, and social dynamics, several types of local pairwise interactions were proposed and analysed l...

Holographic representations of data enable distributed storage with progressive refinement when the stored packets of data are made available in any arbitrary order. In this paper, we propose and test patch-based transform coding holographic sensing of image data. Our proposal is optimized for progressive recovery under random order of retrieval of...

We study the collective motion of autonomous mobile agents on a ringlike environment. The agents' dynamics is inspired by known laboratory experiments on the dynamics of locust swarms. In these experiments, locusts placed at arbitrary locations and initial orientations on a ring-shaped arena are observed to eventually all march in the same directio...

In this report we show the emergent behavior of a group of agents, ordered from 1 to n, performing deviated, linear, cyclic pursuit, in the presence of a broadcast guidance control. Each agent senses the relative position of its target, i.e. agent i senses the relative position of agent i+1. The broadcast control, a velocity signal, is detected by...

The popularity of low-cost RGB-D scanners is increasing on a daily basis and has set off a major boost in 3D computer vision research. Nevertheless, commodity scanners often cannot capture subtle details in the environment. In other words, the precision of existing depth scanners is often not accurate enough to recover fine details of scanned objec...

This report studies the emergent behavior of systems of agents performing cyclic pursuit controlled by an external broadcast signal detected by a random set of the agents. Two types of cyclic pursuit are analyzed: 1)linear cyclic pursuit, where each agent senses the relative position of its target or leading agent 2)non-linear cyclic pursuit, where...

Suppose that in a given planar circular region, there are some smart mobile evaders and we would like to find them using sweeping agents. We assume that each agent has a line sensor of length 2r. We propose procedures for designing cooperative sweeping processes that ensure the successful completion of the task, thereby deriving conditions on the s...

The human visual system correctly groups features and can even interpret random-dot videos induced by imaging natural dynamic scenes. Remarkably, this happens even if perception completely fails when the same information is presented frame by frame. We study this property of surprising dynamic perception with the first goal of proposing a new detec...

In this work we study the topic of high-resolution adaptive sampling of a given deterministic signal and establish a clear connection to classic analyses of high-rate quantization. More specifically, we formulate solutions to the task of optimal high-resolution sampling of one-dimensional signals, which are shown as the counterparts of well-known r...

The human visual system correctly groups features and interprets videos displaying non persistent and noisy random-dot data induced by imaging natural dynamic scenes. Remarkably, this happens even if perception completely fails when the same information is presented frame by frame. We study this property of surprising dynamic perception with the fi...

We study the ability of mobile agents performing simple local computations to completely cover an unknown graph environment while implicitly constructing a distributed spanning tree. Whenever an agent moves, it may crash and disappear from the environment. The agents activate autonomously at exponential waiting times of mean $1$ and enter the graph...

Suppose that in a given planar circular region, there are some smart mobile evaders and we would like to find them using sweeping agents. We assume that the sweeping agents are in a line formation whose total length is 2r. We propose procedures for designing a sweeping process that ensures the successful completion of the task, thereby deriving con...

Distributed gathering algorithms aim to achieve complete visibility graphs via a "never lose a neighbour" policy. We suggest a method to maintain connected graph topologies, while reducing the number of effective edges in the graph to order n. This allows to achieve different goals and swarming behaviours: the system remains connected but flexible,...

Holographic representations of data have two main objectives. The sensing process generates and then distributes multiple descriptions of information in packets that enable progressive recovery. The packets are designed to have as equal importance as possible to guarantee smoothness in the quality of the recovered information, independent of the or...

The limited energy capacity of individual robotic agents in a swarm often limits the possible cooperative tasks they can perform. In this work, we investigate the problem of covering an unknown con- nected grid environment (e.g. a maze or connected corridors) with a robotic swarm so as to minimize the maximal number of steps that each member of the...

The limited energy capacity of individual robotic agents in a swarm often limits the possible cooperative tasks they can perform. In this work, we investigate the problem of covering an unknown connected grid environment (e.g. a maze or connected corridors) with a robotic swarm so as to minimize the maximal number of steps that each member of the s...

Holographic representations of data encode information in packets of equal importance that enable progressive recovery. The quality of recovered data improves as more and more packets become available. This progressive recovery of the information is independent of the order in which packets become available. Such representations are ideally suited...

This report surveys results on distributed systems comprising mobile agents that are identical and anonymous, oblivious and interact solely by adjusting their motion according to the relative location of their neighbours. The agents are assumed capable of sensing the presence of other agents within a given sensing range and able to implement rules...

We present a novel probabilistic gathering algorithms for agents that can only detect the presence of other agents in front or behind them. The agents act in the plane and are identical and indistinguishable, oblivious and lack any means of direct communication. They do not have a common frame of reference in the plane and choose their orientation...

The main contribution of this paper is a novel method allowing an external observer/controller to steer and guide swarms of identical and indistinguishable agents, in spite of the agents' lack of information on absolute location and orientation. Importantly, this is done via simple global broadcast signals, based on the observed average swarm locat...

Storage systems often rely on multiple copies of the same compressed data, enabling recovery in case of binary data errors, of course, at the expense of a higher storage cost. In this paper we show that a wiser method of duplication entails great potential benefits for data types tolerating approximate representations, like images and videos. We pr...

A society of agents, with ideological positions, or "opinions" measured by real values ranging from $-\infty$ (the "far left") to $+\infty$ (the "far right"), is considered. At fixed (unit) time intervals agents repeatedly reconsider and change their opinions if and only if they find themselves at the extremes of the range of ideological positions...

We consider a group of mobile robotic agents, identical and indistinguishable, having no memory (oblivious) and no common frame of reference (neither absolute location nor a common orientation). Furthermore, these agents are assumed to posses only rudimentary sensing and computational capabilities (limited visibility and basic geometric sorting). W...

In this work we propose a method for optimizing the lossy compression for a network of diverse reconstruction systems. We focus on adapting a standard image compression method to a set of candidate displays, presenting the decompressed signals to viewers. Each display is modeled as a linear operator applied after decompression, and its probability...

Many information systems employ lossy compression as a crucial intermediate stage among other processing components. While the important distortion is defined by the system's input and output signals, the compression usually ignores the system structure, therefore, leading to an overall sub-optimal rate-distortion performance. In this paper we prop...

This work examines the Cooperative Hunters problem, where a swarm of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) is used for searching after one or more “evading targets”, which freely maneuver in a predefined area while trying to avoid detection by the swarm’s drones. By arranging themselves into an efficient geometric collaborative flight formation, the drones...

In this work we analyze the behavior of a swarm of autonomous robotic agents, or drones, designed for cooperatively exploring an unknown area (for purposes of cleaning, painting, etc.). We assume that each robot can acquire only the information which is available in its immediate vicinity, and the only way of inter-robot communication is by leaving...

In this paper we study the strengths and limitations of collaborative swarms of simple agents. In particular, we discuss the efficient use of simple drones, or “ant robots” for covering a connected region on the \(\mathbf{Z}^{2}\) grid, whose area is unknown in advance, and which expands at a given rate, where n is the initial size of the connected...

In this chapter we examine the dynamic generalization of the Cooperative Cleaners problem presented in Altshuler et al., Swarm intelligent systems (2006), [10] and in the previous chapters of this book, involving a swarm of collaborative drones that are required to search a dynamically expanding region on the \( \mathbf{Z}^{2}\) grid (whose “pixels...

This book aims to bring to the forefront innovative approaches for the design and analysis of Swarm Search systems and methodologies. Specifically, the book offers a comprehensive analysis of the theory and tools needed for the development of an efficient and robust infrastructure for the design of collaborative patrolling UAV swarms, focusing on i...

In this work we study the strengths and limitations of collaborative teams of simple robotic agents, operating in stochastic environments. In particular, we discuss the efficient use of a swarm of “ant robots” (e.h. simple drones with a limited technical specifications) for covering a connected region on the \(\mathbf{Z}^{2}\) grid, whose area and...

In this chapter we examine the dynamic generalization of the Cooperative Cleaners problem presented in [10] and in the previous chapter of this book, involving a swarm of collaborative drones that are required to search a dynamically expanding region on the \(\mathbf {Z}^{2}\) grid (whose “pixels” that were visited by the drones can become “un-sear...

Current state of the art in the field of UAV activation relies solely on human operators for the design and adaptation of the drones flying routes. Furthermore, this is being done today on an individual level (one vehicle per operators), with some exceptions of a handful of new systems, that are comprised of a small number of self-organizing swarms...

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the theory and tools needed for the development of an efficient and robust infrastructure for the design of collaborative patrolling unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms, focusing on its applications for tactical intelligence drones. It discusses frameworks for robustly and near-optimally analyzing flock...

A group of mobile agents, identical, anonymous, and oblivious (memoryless), able to sense only the direction (bearing) to neighboring agents within a finite visibility range, are shown to gather to a meeting point, in finite time, by applying a very simple rule of motion. The agents act in continuous time, and their rule of motion is as follows: th...

In imaging systems, following acquisition, an image/video is transmitted or stored and eventually presented to human observers using different and often imperfect display devices. While the resulting quality of the output image may severely be affected by the display, this degradation is usually ignored in the preceding compression. In this paper w...

In imaging systems, following acquisition, an image/video is transmitted or stored and eventually presented to human observers using different and often imperfect display devices. While the resulting quality of the output image may severely be affected by the display, this degradation is usually ignored in the preceding compression. In this paper w...

In this paper we study the topic of signal restoration using complexity regularization, quantifying the compression bit-cost of the signal estimate. While complexity-regularized restoration is an established concept, solid practical methods were suggested only for the Gaussian denoising task, leaving more complicated restoration problems without a...

In this paper we study the topic of signal restoration using complexity regularization, quantifying the compression bit-cost of the signal estimate. While complexity-regularized restoration is an established concept, solid practical methods were suggested only for the Gaussian denoising task, leaving more complicated restoration problems without a...

The authors present a local rule of behavior for extremely simple unicycle agents that can only detect the presence of other agents in a visibility sector directly in front of them. Following this simple rule of interaction, the agents gather and remain close to one another, without ever acquiring any information on exact distances or bearings towa...

We consider discrete dynamical systems of "ant-like" agents engaged in a sequence of pursuits on a graph environment. The agents emerge one by one at equal time intervals from a source vertex $s$ and pursue each other by greedily attempting to close the distance to their immediate predecessor, the agent that emerged just before them from $s$, until...

We consider discrete dynamical systems of "ant-like" agents engaged in a sequence of pursuits on a graph environment. The agents emerge one by one at equal time intervals from a source vertex $s$ and pursue each other by greedily attempting to close the distance to their immediate predecessor, the agent that emerged just before them from $s$, until...

A model is presented for an adaptive neuronal encoder that relates the output firing frequency to the input current. It is based on the integral pulse frequency modulation (IPFM) and includes cumulative inhibitory feedback as well as output dependent adaptive threshold control. The model reproduces both short and long term adaptation phenomena as e...

Current state of the art in the field of UAV activation relies solely on human operators for the design and adaptation of the drones' flying routes. Furthermore, this is being done today on an individual level (one vehicle per operators), with some exceptions of a handful of new systems, that are comprised of a small number of self-organizing swarm...

In this work we study the topic of high-resolution adaptive sampling of a given deterministic signal and establish a connection with classic approaches to high-rate quantization. Specifically, we formulate solutions for the task of optimal high-resolution sampling, counterparts of well-known results for high-rate quantization. Our results reveal th...

In this work we propose a new postprocessing method for video sequences compressed using intra-frame coding techniques. The suggested method extends our previously published approach for handling compressed still-images. We rely on the Plug-and-Play Prior framework, which shows that a general inverse problem can be cast as a sequence of Gaussian de...

We discuss the topic of selecting optimal orthonormal bases for representing classes of signals defined either through statistics or via some deterministic characterizations, or combinations of the two. In all cases, the best bases result from spectral analysis of a Hermitian matrix that summarizes the prior information we have on the signals we wa...

A group of mobile agents, identical, anonymous, and oblivious (memoryless), having the capacity to sense only the relative direction (bearing) to neighboring agents within a finite visibility range, are shown to gather to a meeting point in finite time by applying a very simple rule of motion. The agents’ rule of motion is: set your velocity vector...

We present a model for controlling swarms of mobile agents via a broadcast control, detected by a random number of agents in the swarm. The agents that detect the control signal become the ad-hoc leaders of the swarm, while they detect the exogenous control. The agents are assumed to be velocity controlled, identical, anonymous, oblivious units wit...

A team of identical and oblivious ant-like agents - a(ge)nts - leaving pheromone traces, are programmed to jointly patrol an area modeled as a graph. They perform this task using simple local interactions, while also achieving the important byproduct of partitioning the graph into roughly equal-sized disjoint sub-graphs. Each a(ge)nt begins to oper...