Related papers: RAnGE: Reachability Analysis for Guaranteed Ergodi…
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…
In this paper, we address the problem of safe trajectory planning for autonomous search and exploration in constrained, cluttered environments. Guaranteeing safe (collision-free) trajectories is a challenging problem that has garnered…
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…
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…
Robots with the ability to balance time against the thoroughness of search have the potential to provide time-critical assistance in applications such as search and rescue. Current advances in ergodic coverage-based search methods have…
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…
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…
This paper addresses the autonomous robot ergodicity problem for efficient environment exploration. The spatial distribution as a reference is given by a mixture of Gaussian and the mass generation of the robot is assumed to be skinny…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Intercepting dynamic objects in uncertain environments involves a significant unresolved challenge in modern robotic systems. Current control approaches rely solely on estimated information, and results lack guarantees of robustness and…
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…
Ergodic exploration has spawned a lot of interest in mobile robotics due to its ability to design time trajectories that match desired spatial coverage statistics. However, current ergodic approaches are for continuous spaces, which require…
Ergodic control synthesizes optimal coverage behaviors over spatial distributions for nonlinear systems. However, existing formulations model the robot as a non-volumetric point, whereas in practice a robot interacts with the environment…
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…
In this article, we present a feedback control method for tactile coverage tasks, such as cleaning or surface inspection. These tasks are challenging to plan due to complex continuous physical interactions. In these tasks, the coverage…
This paper presents a whole-body robot control method for exploring and probing a given region of interest. The ergodic control formalism behind such an exploration behavior consists of matching the time-averaged statistics of a robot…
A runtime assurance system (RTA) for a given plant enables the exercise of an untrusted or experimental controller while assuring safety with a backup (or safety) controller. The relevant computational design problem is to create a logic…