Related papers: Active Markov Information-Theoretic Path Planning …
The ability to plan informative paths online is essential to robot autonomy. In particular, sampling-based approaches are often used as they are capable of using arbitrary information gain formulations. However, they are prone to local…
The objective of this work is to augment the basic abilities of a robot by learning to use new sensorimotor primitives to enable the solution of complex long-horizon problems. Solving long-horizon problems in complex domains requires…
In this paper, we consider a class of continuous-time, continuous-space stochastic optimal control problems. Building upon recent advances in Markov chain approximation methods and sampling-based algorithms for deterministic path planning,…
We present PLUMES, a planner to localizing and collecting samples at the global maximum of an a priori unknown and partially observable continuous environment. The "maximum-seek-and-sample" (MSS) problem is pervasive in the environmental…
Importance sampling of trajectories has proved a uniquely successful strategy for exploring rare dynamical behaviors of complex systems in an unbiased way. Carrying out this sampling, however, requires an ability to propose changes to…
We investigate improving Monte Carlo Tree Search based solvers for Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs), when applied to adaptive sampling problems. We propose improvements in rollout allocation, the action exploration…
When robots are deployed in the field for environmental monitoring they typically execute pre-programmed motions, such as lawnmower paths, instead of adaptive methods, such as informative path planning. One reason for this is that adaptive…
Integrated task and motion planning has emerged as a challenging problem in sequential decision making, where a robot needs to compute high-level strategy and low-level motion plans for solving complex tasks. While high-level strategies…
The proliferation of unmanned vehicles offers many opportunities for solving environmental sampling tasks with applications in resource monitoring and precision agriculture. Informative path planning (IPP) includes a family of methods which…
We study the sparsity and optimality properties of crowd navigation and find that existing techniques do not satisfy both criteria simultaneously: either they achieve optimality with a prohibitive number of samples or tractability…
Multi-agent mapping is a fundamentally important capability for autonomous robot task coordination and execution in complex environments. While successful algorithms have been proposed for mapping using individual platforms, cooperative…
We study informative path planning (IPP) with travel budgets in cluttered environments, where an agent collects measurements of a latent field modeled as a Gaussian process (GP) to reduce uncertainty at target locations. Graph-based solvers…
Autonomous racing creates challenging control problems, but Model Predictive Control (MPC) has made promising steps toward solving both the minimum lap-time problem and head-to-head racing. Yet, accurate models of the system are necessary…
Active classification, i.e., the sequential decision-making process aimed at data acquisition for classification purposes, arises naturally in many applications, including medical diagnosis, intrusion detection, and object tracking. In this…
An informative measurement is the most efficient way to gain information about an unknown state. We present a first-principles derivation of a general-purpose dynamic programming algorithm that returns an optimal sequence of informative…
In order to solve complex, long-horizon tasks, intelligent robots need to carry out high-level, abstract planning and reasoning in conjunction with motion planning. However, abstract models are typically lossy and plans or policies computed…
A significant cause of air pollution in urban areas worldwide is the high volume of road traffic. Long-term exposure to severe pollution can cause serious health issues. One approach towards tackling this problem is to design a…
Robotic systems must be able to quickly and robustly make decisions when operating in uncertain and dynamic environments. While Reinforcement Learning (RL) can be used to compute optimal policies with little prior knowledge about the…
The ability of Gaussian processes (GPs) to predict the behavior of dynamical systems as a more sample-efficient alternative to parametric models seems promising for real-world robotics research. However, the computational complexity of GPs…
We consider the informative path planning ($\mathtt{IPP}$) problem in which a robot interacts with an uncertain environment and gathers information by visiting locations. The goal is to minimize its expected travel cost to cover a given…