Related papers: Navigation between initial and desired community s…
We consider an autonomous navigation problem, whereby a traveler aims at traversing an environment in which an adversary tries to set an ambush. A two players zero sum game is introduced. Players' strategies are computed as random path…
Taking inspiration from how the brain coordinates multiple learning systems is an appealing strategy to endow robots with more flexibility. One of the expected advantages would be for robots to autonomously switch to the least costly system…
Socially compliant navigation requires robots to move safely and appropriately in human-centered environments by respecting social norms. However, social norms are often ambiguous, and in a single scenario, multiple actions may be equally…
Background: Living cells of many types need to move in response to external stimuli in order to accomplish their functional tasks; these tasks range from wound healing to immune response to fertilization. While the directional motion is…
We developed a simulated environment to train deep reinforcement learning agents on a shortcut usage navigation task, motivated by the Dual Solutions Paradigm test used for human navigators. We manipulated the frequency with which agents…
Microbial ecosystems are commonly modeled by fixed interactions between species in steady exponential growth states. However, microbes often modify their environments so strongly that they are forced out of the exponential state into…
In this paper, we compare different map management techniques for long-term visual navigation in changing environments. In this scenario, the navigation system needs to continuously update and refine its feature map in order to adapt to the…
Navigation up a sensory gradient is one of the simplest behaviours, and the simplest strategy is run and tumble. But some organisms use other strategies, such as reversing direction or turning by some angle. Here we ask what drives the…
In this paper, we present a robotic navigation algorithm with natural language interfaces, which enables a robot to safely walk through a changing environment with moving persons by following human instructions such as "go to the restaurant…
We investigate how a neural network can learn perception actions loops for navigation in unknown environments. Specifically, we consider how to learn to navigate in environments populated with cul-de-sacs that represent convex local minima…
Robots operating alongside humans often encounter unfamiliar environments that make autonomous task completion challenging. Though improving models and increasing dataset size can enhance a robot's performance in unseen environments, data…
We study the problem of placing wildlife crossings, such as green bridges, over human-made obstacles to challenge habitat fragmentation. The main task herein is, given a graph describing habitats or routes of wildlife animals and…
Merging at highway on-ramps while interacting with other human-driven vehicles is challenging for autonomous vehicles (AVs). An efficient route to this challenge requires exploring and exploiting knowledge of the interaction process from…
The study of navigation behaviour and the associated brain dynamics have been a focus increasing research over the last decades. Coinciding with this has been an increased focus on a more ecological understanding of cognition. Here we…
Traditional approaches to the design of multi-agent navigation algorithms consider the environment as a fixed constraint, despite the influence of spatial constraints on agents' performance. Yet hand-designing conducive environment layouts…
In densely populated environments, socially compliant navigation is critical for autonomous robots as driving close to people is unavoidable. This manner of social navigation is challenging given the constraints of human comfort and social…
Effective locomotion in nature happens by transitioning across multiple modes (e.g., walk, run, climb). Despite this, far more mechanistic understanding of terrestrial locomotion has been on how to generate and stabilize around…
This paper investigates the problem of computing the shortest path between two states under resource constraints in environments with resource-replenishment regions. Namely, the length of the path is limited by a budget that can be restored…
The role of species interactions in controlling the interplay between the stability of an ecosystem and its biodiversity is still not well understood. The ability of ecological communities to recover after a small perturbation of the…
We consider particles that are conditioned to initial and final states. The trajectory of these particles is uniquely shaped by the intricate interplay of internal and external sources of randomness. The internal randomness is aptly…