An enormous amount of data is collected every day from a variety of sensors. How can we catalog and search these dynamic and distributed databases automatically so as to extract “meaningful information?” The applications are in research, education, entertainment, advertisement, surveillance, monitoring, etc. It requires the tools and fundamental techniques for representation of data/events, data compression, algorithms for data indexing, human-computer interfaces, adaptation to the competence and needs of the user, integration of information, evidence accumulation, inexact queries, spatio-temporal reasoning, reasoning in the time-history of the data, distributed processing and control, statistical validation of algorithms, etc.

Sensing, perception and autonomous decision making are key ingredients for intelligent automation where the machine is faced with unexpected challenges and makes intelligent decisions. Examples include perception-based real-world navigation, space exploration, robot assistants for frail and handicapped people, service robots to automate hazardous tasks, etc. The critical research areas are the core competencies of the center faculty: engineering, computer science, mathematics, statistics, psychology, economics and business.