Related papers: Optimal switching strategies for navigation in sto…

In this paper we focus on a two-link swimmer called scallop which moves changing dynamics between two fluids regimes. We address and solve explicitly two optimal control problems, the minimum time one and the minimum quadratic cost needed…

Classical deterministic optimal control problems assume full information about the controlled process. The theory of control for general partially-observable processes is powerful, but the methods are computationally expensive and typically…

In tasks such as surveying or monitoring remote regions, an autonomous robot must move while transmitting data over a wireless network with unknown, position-dependent transmission rates. For such a robot, this paper considers the problem…

Detecting dynamic patterns of task-specific responses shared across heterogeneous datasets is an essential and challenging problem in many scientific applications in medical science and neuroscience. In our motivating example of rodent…

Navigation through narrow passages during colony relocation by the tandem-running ants, $\textit{Diacamma}$ $\textit{indicum}$, is a tour de force of biological traffic coordination. Even on one-lane paths, the ants tactfully manage a…

Snake robots have the potential to maneuver through tightly packed and complex environments. One challenge in enabling them to do so is the complexity in determining how to coordinate their many degrees-of-freedom to create purposeful…

Animal cells can sense chemical gradients without moving, and are faced with the challenge of migrating towards a target despite noisy information on the target position. Here we discuss optimal search strategies for a chaser that moves by…

We report a globally-optimal approach to robotic path planning under uncertainty, based on the theory of quantitative measures of formal languages. A significant generalization to the language-measure-theoretic path planning algorithm…

We present theoretical and numerical results concerning the problem to find the path that minimizes the time to navigate between two given points in a complex fluid under realistic navigation constraints. We contrast deterministic Optimal…

Zermelo's navigation problem seeks the trajectory of minimal travel time between two points in a fluid flow. We address this problem for an agent -- such as a micro-robot or active particle -- that is advected by a two-dimensional flow,…

In the present paper we deal with an optimal control problem related to a model in population dynamics; more precisely, the goal is to modify the behavior of a given density of individuals via another population of agents interacting with…

In this work, we use optimal control to change the behavior of a deep reinforcement learning policy by optimizing directly in the policy's latent space. We hypothesize that distinct behavioral patterns, termed behavioral modes, can be…

The pursuit-evasion problem is widespread in nature, engineering, and societal applications. It is commonly observed in nature that predators often exhibit faster speeds than their prey but have less agile maneuverability. Over millions of…

We consider optimal control problems for partial differential equations where the controls take binary values but vary over the time horizon, they can thus be seen as dynamic switches. The switching patterns may be subject to combinatorial…

What is the fastest way of finding a randomly hidden target? This question of general relevance is of vital importance for foraging animals. Experimental observations reveal that the search behaviour of foragers is generally intermittent:…

We develop a prototypical stochastic model for local search around a given home. The stochastic dynamic model is motivated by experimental findings of the motion of a fruit fly around a given spot of food but shall generally describe local…

This paper considers the problem of optimally balancing motion energy and communication transmission energy of a mobile robot tasked with transmitting a given number of data bits to a remote station, while navigating to a prespecified…

We present an approach for identifying the most walkable direction for navigation using a hand-held camera. Our approach extracts semantically rich contextual information from the scene using a custom encoder-decoder architecture for…

We study the maximal displacement of branching random walks in a class of time inhomogeneous environments. Specifically, binary branching random walks with Gaussian increments will be considered, where the variances of the increments change…

How choices are made within noisy environments is a central question in the neuroscience of decision making. Previous work has characterized temporal accumulation of evidence for decision-making in static environments. However, real-world…