Related papers: Eclares: Energy-Aware Clarity-Driven Ergodic Searc…
Continuous exploration without interruption is important in scenarios such as search and rescue and precision agriculture, where consistent presence is needed to detect events over large areas. Ergodic search already derives continuous…
Autonomous robots are increasingly deployed for long-term information-gathering tasks, which pose two key challenges: planning informative trajectories in environments that evolve across space and time, and ensuring persistent operation…
Robots have the potential to perform search for a variety of applications under different scenarios. Our work is motivated by humanitarian assistant and disaster relief (HADR) where often it is critical to find signs of life in the presence…
This paper presents an active search trajectory synthesis technique for autonomous mobile robots with nonlinear measurements and dynamics. The presented approach uses the ergodicity of a planned trajectory with respect to an expected…
In this work, we address the problem of multi-robot adaptive coverage, where teams of robots perform dynamic sampling by continuously adjusting their positions to collect data in an environment. This task can be challenging, particularly…
In search and surveillance applications in robotics, it is intuitive to spatially distribute robot trajectories with respect to the probability of locating targets in the domain. Ergodic coverage is one such approach to trajectory planning…
This paper addresses the problem of trajectory planning for information gathering with a dynamic and resolution-varying sensor footprint. Ergodic planning offers a principled framework that balances exploration (visiting all areas) and…
Autonomous robotic search has important applications in robotics, such as the search for signs of life after a disaster. When \emph{a priori} information is available, for example in the form of a distribution, a planner can use that…
Designing continuous trajectories whose time-averaged occupancy provably matches a prescribed spatial density (the \emph{ergodic coverage} problem) is central to UAV-assisted data collection and sensing, robotic exploration, and mobile…
Exploration requires that robots reason about numerous ways to cover a space in response to dynamically changing conditions. However, in continuous domains there are potentially infinitely many options for robots to explore which can prove…
We present a novel formulation of ergodic trajectory optimization that can be specified over general domains using kernel maximum mean discrepancy. Ergodic trajectory optimization is an effective approach that generates coverage paths for…
Ergodic search enables optimal exploration of an information distribution while guaranteeing the asymptotic coverage of the search space. However, current methods typically have exponential computation complexity in the search space…
This research addresses the challenge of performing search missions in dynamic environments, particularly for drifting targets whose movement is dictated by a flow field. This is accomplished through a dynamical system that integrates two…
This paper investigates performance guarantees on coverage-based ergodic exploration methods in environments containing disturbances. Ergodic exploration methods generate trajectories for autonomous robots such that time spent in each area…
We present a method for image-guided exploration for mobile robotic systems. Our approach extends ergodic exploration methods, a recent exploration approach that prioritizes complete coverage of a space, with the use of a learned image…
Autonomous robotic exploration in remote and extreme environments allows scientists to model complex transport phenomena and collective behaviors described by continuously deforming flow fields. Although these environments are naturally…
This paper develops KL-Ergodic Exploration from Equilibrium ($\text{KL-E}^3$), a method for robotic systems to integrate stability into actively generating informative measurements through ergodic exploration. Ergodic exploration enables…
We consider a search problem where a robot has one or more types of sensors, each suited to detecting different types of targets or target information. Often, information in the form of a distribution of possible target locations, or…
Electric vehicles are a central component of future mobility systems as they promise to reduce local noxious and fine dust emissions and CO2 emissions, if fed by clean energy sources. However, the adoption of electric vehicles so far fell…
Although a number of solutions exist for the problems of coverage, search and target localization---commonly addressed separately---whether there exists a unified strategy that addresses these objectives in a coherent manner without being…