Dr Jeremy Baxter CEng, FIET, PhD

School of Computer Science
Senior Research Fellow Poynting Institute

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0) 121 414 3710
Telephone (2): +44 (0) 7982 660 239
Email: j.baxter@poynting.bham.ac.uk

Address: School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Jeremy Baxter is a part-time member of the Poynting Institute at the University of Birmingham and a Lead Researcher at QinetiQ (Malvern).

Jeremy has carried out research in Autonomous and multi-agent systems for the past twenty years being interested in a wide range of planning and reactive execution systems. He has carried out research on multi-vehicle co-operation for umnanned air vehicles as well as path planning and obstacle avoidance for ground vehicles.

In particular his work has supported the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD). His team demonstrated the first system capable of allowing a fast jet pilot to control four UAVs during test flights in May 2007. The blog in Aviation Week is viewed here.

Jeremy provided the reasoning software for Taranis UCAV demonstrator due to fly in Australia in 2011.

http://www.qinetiq.com/home/newsroom/news_releases_homepage/2010/3rd_quarter/taranis_rollout.html
http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/tanaris/

Biography

Dr Jeremy Baxter is a Lead Researcher in the UAVs and Autonomous Systems Group. Jeremy gained a first class honours degree in Engineering from Durham in 1991and a Ph.D. in Fuzzy Logic Control of Automated Vehicles (also from Durham University) in 1994.

Jeremy joined QinetiQ (DERA) in 1994 and his initial work focussed on the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques to battlefield simulation and the development of Multi Agent systems. This included the development of a robust planning and execution framework for groups of vehicles, capable of re-organising in the face of failures and losses. From 2001 to 2003 he was responsible for providing the autonomous navigation component of the Unmanned Ground Vehicle Demonstrator program.

Since 2002 he has lead a team developing cooperative behaviours for groups of Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles. This included numerous high fidelity synthetic environment trials, test flights on the QinetiQ Surrogate UAV in 2006/2007 and being the lead designer for the Reasoning layer of the MoD UCAV demonstrator system, Taranis.

In 2011 he started a part time appointment researching robotics and autonomy in the Poynting institute at the University of Brimingham.

Jeremy is the principal author of several scientific papers on agent based decision-making and is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology

Publications

1. Baxter J W and Bumby J R:‘Modifying the Fuzzy Fit Vector to Avoid Unwanted Outputs, with particular reference to automated guided vehicles.’ Proceedings of the Colloquium on Fuzzy Logic and Neural Networks, Liverpool, 1992.

2. Baxter J W and Bumby J R: ‘Fuzzy logic guidance and obstacle avoidance algorithms for autonomous vehicle control.’ Proceedings of the 1st IFAC International Workshop on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, April 1993.

3. Baxter J W and Bumby J R: ‘Fuzzy Control of a Mobile Robotic Vehicle.’ Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers vol 209 1995 pp 79-91

4. Baxter J W and Hepplewhite R T: ‘Intelligent Agents for Battlefield Simulation’ AISB Quarterly vol 93 Autumn 1995 pp 26-33

5. Baxter J W and Hepplewhite R T: ‘Intelligent Agents for Battlefield Simulation’ Proceedings of the 6th Conference on AI, Simulation and Planning in High Autonomy Systems, March 1996 pp 199-205.

6. Hepplewhite R T and Baxter J W: ‘Broad Agents for Intelligent Battlefield Simulation’ Proceedings of the 1st International SIMTECT Conference, March 1996 pp 107-112

7. Hepplewhite R T and Baxter J W: ‘Broad Agents for Intelligent Battlefield Simulation’ Proceedings of the 6th CGF Conference, July 1996 pp 319-320

8. Baxter J W: ‘Executing Plans in a Land Battlefield Simulation’ Proceedings of the AAAI Fall symposia, November 1996 pp 15-18

9. Baxter J W and Hepplewhite R T: ‘An Abstraction Hierarchy of Battlefield Agents’ Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Abstractions, Decisions and Uncertainty, August 1997, AAAI Technical Report WS-97-08 pp 1-2

10. Baxter J W and Hepplewhite R T: ‘Controlling Reasoning Within Battlefield Simulation Agents’ Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Resource Bounded Reasoning, August 1997, AAAI Technical Report WS-97-06 pp 12-16

11. Baxter J W and Hepplewhite R T: ‘Real Time Planning and Execution for a Hierarchy of Battlefield Simulation Agents’ Proceedings of 16^th UK Workshop on Planning and Scheduling, December 1997, ISSN 1368-570 pp 145-152

12. Hepplewhite, R. T. and Baxter, J. W. 1997. Planning and Search Techniques for Intelligent Behaviour of Battlefield Entities. In Recent Advances in AI Planning 4th European Conference on Planning, ECP’97 Toulouse, France. 247-259, Springer Steel S., Alami R. (Eds). Springer (Lecture Notes in computer science; Vol. 1348). ISBN: 3-540-63912-8

13. Hepplewhite, R. T. and Baxter, J. W. 1998. Planning and Search Techniques to Produce Terrain Dependent Behaviours. Proceedings of the 7th CGF Conference, May 1998. Orlando Florida

14. Baxter, J. W. and Hepplewhite, R. T. 1998. Virtual Battlefield Simulation Agents, experience with the SIM_Agent toolkit. In Software tools for developing agents, papers from the 1998 workshop. AAAI technical report WS-98-10, AAAI Press. ISBN: 1-57735-063-4

15. Baxter, J. W. and Hepplewhite, R. T. 1998. Agents in Tank Battle Simulations, Communications of the ACM. March 1999 Volume 42, Number 3 pp.74-75

Baxter, J. W. and Horn, G. 1999. A Model for Co-ordination and co-operation between CGF Agents. Proceedings of the 8th CGF Conference May 1999 Orlando, Florida pp. 101-112.

Baxter, J. W. and Horn, G. 1999. Improving the Co-ordination and Control of Battlefield Simulation Agents. Proceedings of the IJCAI99 Workshop on Team Behaviour and Plan Recognition August 1999 Stockholm, Sweden pp. 1-8.

Hepplewhite, R. T. and Baxter, J. W. 1999. Terrain-dependent behaviours for forces in synthetic land environments. Journal of Defence Science. Vol.4 No.4 pp 397-403

Baxter, J. W. and Horn, G. S. 1999. Co-ordinating Synthetic Force Behaviours. Proceedings of the 2nd International Synthetic Environment Symposium October 1999

Baxter, J. W. and Horn, G. S. 2000. Representing and Executing Group Tasks. Proceedings of the 9th CGF Conference May 2000 Orlando, Florida pp. 443-449. ISBN 1-930638-07-6

Horn, G. S. and Baxter, J. W. 2000. Co-ordinating Agents in the Simulated Battlefield. Proceedings of Workshop on Norms and Institutions in Multi Agent Systems. June 2000 Barcelona, Spain pp. 101-103.

Horn, G. S. and Baxter, J. W. 2000. Issues affecting the Control and Coordination of Agent Teams in the Simulated Battlefield. Proceedings of AAAI Workshop on Representational Issues for Real Worlds Planning Systems. August Austin, Texas pp. 40-42. ISBN 1-577735-122-3

Baxter, J. W. 2000. Computer Generated Forces, Past Present and Future. Proceedings of the NATO Modelling and Simulation Conference October 2000, Shrivenham UK.

Horn, G. S. and Baxter, J. W. 2000. An Interactive Planner for Tank Squadron Assaults. Proceedings of the 19th Workshop of the UK Planning and Scheduling Special Interest Group. December 2000 Milton Keynes, UK pp. 79-88. ISSN 1368-5708

Baxter, J. W. and Hepplewhite, R. 2000. A Hierarchical Distributed Planning Framework for Simulated Battlefield Entities. Proceedings of the 19th Workshop of the UK Planning and Scheduling Special Interest Group. December 2000 Milton Keynes, UK pp. 25-34. ISSN 1368-5708

Horn G.S. and Baxter J.W. 2001 An Interactive Planner for Tank Assaults. Proceedings of the 10th CGF Conference May 2001 Norfolk, Virginia pp. 487-496. ISBN 1-930638-14-0

Baxter J.W. and Horn G.S 2001 Executing Group Tasks Despite Losses and Failures. Proceedings of the 10th CGF Conference May 2001 Norfolk, Virginia pp. 205-214. ISBN 1-930638-14-0

Baxter J.W. and Horn G.S 2003 A Multi-Agent System for Executing Group Tasks. Proceedings of 7th Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems Conference, Oxford. Lecture Notes in AI 2773 part II Springer-Verlag pp 697

Carson J Bruce D and Baxter J. 2003 Towards Time Management Interoperability 2003 Fall Simulation Interoperability Workshop, Orlando Florida. Paper available as 03F-SIW-046.PDF

Baxter J.W. and Horn G. S. A Multi-Agent System for Package Level Autonomy. AIAA-2004-6306 AIAA 1st Intelligent Systems Technical Conference, Chicago, Illinois, Sep. 20-22, 2004

Jeremy W. Baxter, Graham S. Horn: Controlling teams of uninhabited air vehicles. 4th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2005), July 25-29, 2005, Utrecht, The Netherlands. ACM 2005, ISBN 1-59593-093-0: 27-33

Jeremy W. Baxter and Graham S. Horn. Variable-Autonomy Control of Teams of Uninhabited Air Vehicles IEEE Intelligent Systems Vol 21 Issue 2 March/April 2006 p.23-24

Malcolm Strens, Spiros Kapetanakis and Jeremy Baxter Towards a Generic Architecture for Multi-Vehicle Autonomy Proceedings of First Annual SEAS DTC Conference, 13 / 14 May 2006

Malcolm Strens, Jeremy Baxter, Andrew Gardner A Generic Architecture for Hybrid Autonomous Decision Systems Proceedings of Second Annual SEAS DTC Conference, 10 / 11 July 2007

Jeremy W. Baxter and Graham S. Horn Book chapter. Controlling Teams of Uninhabited Air Vehicles in Defence Industry Applications of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems edited by Michal Pechoucek, Simon G. Thompson Birkhäuser Basel 2008 ISBN 978-3-7643-8570-5

Jeremy W. Baxter, Graham S. Horn, Daniel P. Leivers: Fly-by-agent: Controlling a pool of UAVs via a multi-agent system in Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems XV Proceedings of AI-2007, the Twenty-seventh SGAI International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications of Artificial Intelligence. Ellis, Richard; Allen, Tony; Petridis, Miltos (Eds.) 2008, XII. ISBN: 978-1-84800-085-8

Jeremy W. Baxter, Graham S. Horn, Daniel P. Leivers: Fly-by-agent: Controlling a pool of UAVs via a multi-agent system. Knowledge-Based Systems 21 (2008) 232–237

Jeremy W. Baxter and Dale Richards: Whose goal is it anyway? User interaction in an autonomous system. In proceedings of the workshop on Goal Directed Autonomy, AAAI2010, Atlanta, 2010