Lenka Pitonakova

Position: Postgraduate Research Student
Institution: University of Southampton
Webpage: http://lenkaspace.net/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/l_pitonakova
Contact: Complete this online contact form to contact Lenka.

I am a PhD student in Simulation of Complex Systems, concentrating on biologically-inspired swarm behaviour and its applicability to robotics. I am particularly interested in collective tasks like foraging and construction and in how we can design robot control algorithms that could deal with these tasks in a decentralised manner. More specifically, I study information flow in robot swarms and am working on design patterns that could help robot engineers choose particular modules of robot behaviour to suit a given environment.

I currently work with simulations only, in particular with ARGoS, a physics-based environments that realistically represents robots like the Foot-Bot or e-Puck. ARGoS is used by a number of Universities across the EU that are interested in swarms and being a part of its community helps me exchange knowledge with others. I also plan on working with real robots in the future in order to validate my simulation results.

You can read more about my current and past work on my web site.

My other interests include building of simple robots and reading about current trends in space exploration, hobbies which I hope will become a part of my career in the future.

Teaching / demonstrator experience

Supervised a software project undertaken by a group of undergraduate students
Lab demonstrating for a course in parallel programming in C
Lab demonstrating for a course in embedded software engineering in C

Work experience

Freelance developer: Flash, PHP, JavaScript iOS (2007 - now)
Developer and R&D lead for Edelman Digital: iOS, Java, C++, Flash, PHP, JavaScript (2010 - 2011)

Qualifications

MSc in Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems: artificial intelligence, neural networks, dynamical systems, robotics (University of Sussex, 2011)
BSc in Games Development (University of Bedfordshire, 2009)

[Full CV] (http://lenkaspace.net/downloads/L_Pitonakova_CV.pdf) available from my web site.

Working with...

Seth Bullock
Professor, Electronics and Computer Science (FPAS)

Richard Crowder
Senior Lecturer, Electronics and Computer Science (FPAS)

Computational Modelling Group