Related papers: Efficient Non-Myopic Layered Bayesian Optimization…
A key problem of robotic environmental sensing and monitoring is that of active sensing: How can a team of robots plan the most informative observation paths to minimize the uncertainty in modeling and predicting an environmental…
Bayesian optimization (BO) is a model-based approach for gradient-free black-box function optimization. Typically, BO is powered by a Gaussian process (GP), whose algorithmic complexity is cubic in the number of evaluations. Hence, GP-based…
This paper presents an adaptive path planner for object search in agricultural fields using UAVs. The path planner uses a high-altitude coverage flight path and plans additional low-altitude inspections when the detection network is…
Bayesian optimization (BO) is a popular method for optimizing expensive-to-evaluate black-box functions. BO budgets are typically given in iterations, which implicitly assumes each evaluation has the same cost. In fact, in many BO…
Realistic path planning applications often require optimizing with respect to several criteria simultaneously. Here we introduce an efficient algorithm for bi-criteria path planning on graphs. Our approach is based on augmenting the state…
Fast and accurate path planning is important for ground robots to achieve safe and efficient autonomous navigation in unstructured outdoor environments. However, most existing methods exploiting either 2D or 2.5D maps struggle to balance…
A natural way to quantify uncertainties in Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) is through Bayesian methods. That said, sampling from the joint posterior distribution of GMMs via standard Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) imposes several…
This paper introduces Bidirectional Guidance Informed Trees (BIGIT*),~a new asymptotically optimal sampling-based motion planning algorithm. Capitalizing on the strengths of \emph{meet-in-the-middle} property in bidirectional heuristic…
Bayesian optimization (BO) is a sample-efficient approach to optimizing costly-to-evaluate black-box functions. Most BO methods ignore how evaluation costs may vary over the optimization domain. However, these costs can be highly…
This paper provides an optimized cable path planning solution for a tree-topology network in an irregular 2D manifold in a 3D Euclidean space, with an application to the planning of submarine cable networks. Our solution method is based on…
Both computational and experimental material discovery bring forth the challenge of exploring multidimensional and often non-differentiable parameter spaces, such as phase diagrams of Hamiltonians with multiple interactions, composition…
Bayesian Optimization (BO) is a key methodology for accelerating molecular discovery by estimating the mapping from molecules to their properties while seeking the optimal candidate. Typically, BO iteratively updates a probabilistic…
We present a canonical way to turn any smooth parametric family of probability distributions on an arbitrary search space $X$ into a continuous-time black-box optimization method on $X$, the \emph{information-geometric optimization} (IGO)…
Bayesian optimization (BayesOpt) is a gold standard for query-efficient continuous optimization. However, its adoption for drug design has been hindered by the discrete, high-dimensional nature of the decision variables. We develop a new…
Gradient-based trajectory optimization (GTO) has gained wide popularity for quadrotor trajectory replanning. However, it suffers from local minima, which is not only fatal to safety but also unfavorable for smooth navigation. In this paper,…
This paper introduces a novel automatic coverage path planning algorithm for bathymetry surveying with unmanned surface vehicles. The detection range of the mapping sensor employed - a multibeam echo sounder - is heavily influenced by local…
Safe path planning is a crucial component in autonomous robotics. The many approaches to find a collision free path can be categorically divided into trajectory optimisers and sampling-based methods. When planning using occupancy maps, the…
In this paper, we consider a robot navigation problem in environments populated by humans. The goal is to determine collision-free and dynamically feasible trajectories that also maximize human satisfaction. This is because they may drive…
Autonomous driving requires accurate reasoning of the location of objects from raw sensor data. Recent end-to-end learning methods go from raw sensor data to a trajectory output via Bird's Eye View(BEV) segmentation as an interpretable…
Optimization methods for long-horizon, dynamically feasible motion planning in robotics tackle challenging non-convex and discontinuous optimization problems. Traditional methods often falter due to the nonlinear characteristics of these…