Decentralized Coordination of Autonomous Sensor Systems Katia Sycara and Bin Yu Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science, CMU Summary Autonomous sensor systems of the near future are envisioned to consist of hundreds of unmanned vehicles such as UAVs and UGVs. These networked autonomous and geographically distributed sensors play strong roles in military and civilian operations, e.g., battlefield surveillance and disaster rescue. At the same time, sensor systems offer many exciting research challenges due to their real-world constraints such as imperfect sensor data, real-time execution, and scarce wireless communication bandwidth. Many algorithms have been developed in the context of sensor systems, however, most of them are centralized and not scalable due to their optimistic assumption of unlimited communication bandwidth. In this tutorial we will discuss various distributed coordination algorithms that scale well to large numbers of autonomous mobile sensors that may enter and leave the system dynamically. Specifically, we will focus on approximate algorithms for data delivery and fusion, task and resource allocation, and cooperative path planning. Moreover, we will present some advanced techniques that can effectively reason about spatial and temporal sensor data in the presence of noise and uncertainty. We will describe a novel approach for force aggregation and classification using Dempster-Shafer theory that has the potential of improving commanders' decision making. This tutorial is intended for any delegates who have some basic knowledge of AI. Familiarity with basic concepts of sensor systems is desirable but not essential. Biography Dr. Katia Sycara is a Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She holds BS in Applied Math from Brown University, MS Electrical Engineering from University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research work lies in the intersection of Operations Research, Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering. Dr. Sycara has authored over 300 technical papers and book chapters in multiagent/multirobot systems, negotiation, auctions, agent teams, and human-agent interaction. Prof. Sycara is a Fellow of the AAAI, Fellow of the IEEE and the recipient of the 2002 ACM/SIGART Agents Research Award. She is a founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems and on the editorial board of 5 additional journals. She has served as the Program Chair for the Second International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC-03) and the General Chair of the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents-98). Dr. Bin Yu is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Computer Science at CMU. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University in 2002. His research interests lie in the areas of artificial intelligence and distributed sensor systems. Currently, he is leading the research effort of the Information Fusion project under the AFOSR PRET Program. Dr. Yu has authored more than 20 technical papers in the areas of artificial intelligence, peer-to-peer systems, and distributed sensor systems. One of his papers appeared at the Fourth International Conference on Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS-05) and was nominated for the best paper award. He has served as the Proceedings Chair of the Fourth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS-05).