Related papers: An Approach to Autonomous Science by Modeling Geol…
Mapping and navigation have gone hand-in-hand since long before robots existed. Maps are a key form of communication, allowing someone who has never been somewhere to nonetheless navigate that area successfully. In the context of…
Shared autonomy is a promising paradigm in robotic systems, particularly within the maritime domain, where complex, high-risk, and uncertain environments necessitate effective human-robot collaboration. This paper investigates the…
Given the remarkable performance of Large Language Models (LLMs), an important question arises: Can LLMs conduct human-like scientific research and discover new knowledge, and act as an AI scientist? Scientific discovery is an iterative…
The Science of Science (SoS) explores the mechanisms underlying scientific discovery, and offers valuable insights for enhancing scientific efficiency and fostering innovation. Traditional approaches often rely on simplistic assumptions and…
We consider the problem of autonomous mobile robot exploration in an unknown environment, taking into account a robot's coverage rate, map uncertainty, and state estimation uncertainty. This paper presents a novel exploration framework for…
The field of autonomous navigation for unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) is in continuous growth and increasing levels of autonomy have been reached in the last few years. However, the task becomes more challenging when the focus is on the…
The rising popularity of self-driving cars has led to the emergence of a new research field in the recent years: Autonomous racing. Researchers are developing software and hardware for high performance race vehicles which aim to operate…
We propose an autonomous exploration algorithm designed for decentralized multi-robot teams, which takes into account map and localization uncertainties of range-sensing mobile robots. Virtual landmarks are used to quantify the combined…
The powerful reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) in mathematics and coding, combined with their ability to automate complex tasks through agentic frameworks, present unprecedented opportunities for accelerating scientific…
In the expeditionary sciences, spatiotemporally varying environments -- hydrothermal plumes, algal blooms, lava flows, or animal migrations -- are ubiquitous. Mobile robots are uniquely well-suited to study these dynamic, mesoscale natural…
Mobile robots rely on maps to navigate through an environment. In the absence of any map, the robots must build the map online from partial observations as they move in the environment. Traditional methods build a map using only direct…
With the rapid development of simulation tools, the development and validation of autonomous robotic systems have become more efficient before real-world deployment. This paper presents a simulation-to-real implementation of an autonomous…
Autonomous robot navigation in complex environments requires robust perception as well as high-level scene understanding due to perceptual challenges, such as occlusions, and uncertainty introduced by robot movement. For example, a robot…
Safe autonomous exploration of unknown environments is an essential skill for mobile robots to effectively and adaptively perform environmental mapping for diverse critical tasks. Due to its simplicity, most existing exploration methods…
Autonomy at Levels is the idea that autonomy should be embedded within and throughout a spacecraft. Using Systems Engineering methods a spacecraft is typically decomposed into systems, subsystems, assemblies, components, and so on. All…
Autonomy is fundamental for artificial agents acting in complex real-world scenarios. The acquisition of many different skills is pivotal to foster versatile autonomous behaviour and thus a main objective for robotics and machine learning.…
This paper discusses ongoing work in demonstrating research in mobile autonomy in challenging driving scenarios. In our approach, we address fundamental technical issues to overcome critical barriers to assurance and regulation for…
In this paper we present a simulation framework for the evaluation of the navigation and localization metrological performances of a robotic platform. The simulator, based on ROS (Robot Operating System) Gazebo, is targeted to a…
In this paper we show how rule-based decision making can be combined with traditional motion planning techniques to achieve human-like behavior of a self-driving vehicle in complex traffic situations. We give and discuss examples of…
As robots are deployed in complex situations, engineers and end users must develop a holistic understanding of their behaviors, capabilities, and limitations. Some behaviors are directly optimized by the objective function. They often…