Related papers: CUTE-Planner: Confidence-aware Uneven Terrain Expl…
This paper focuses on developing new navigation and reconnaissance capabilities for cooperative unmanned systems in uncertain environments. The goal is to design a cooperative multi-vehicle system that can survey an unknown environment and…
The problem of path planning in unknown environments remains a challenging problem - as the environment is gradually observed during the navigation, the underlying planner has to update the environment representation and replan, promptly…
This paper addresses the problem of planning a safe (i.e., collision-free) trajectory from an initial state to a goal region when the obstacle space is a-priori unknown and is incrementally revealed online, e.g., through line-of-sight…
Autonomous robots operating in unstructured, safety-critical environments, from planetary exploration to warehouses and homes, must learn to safely navigate and interact with their surroundings despite limited prior knowledge. Current…
This paper introduces a graph-based, potential-guided method for path planning problems in unknown environments, where obstacles are unknown until the robots are in close proximity to the obstacle locations. Inspired by optimal transport…
Accurate traversability estimation using an online dense terrain map is crucial for safe navigation in challenging environments like construction and disaster areas. However, traversability estimation for legged robots on rough terrains…
Autonomous exploration of multi-floor buildings remains challenging for ground robots because conventional 2D and 2.5D maps cannot represent overlapping traversable surfaces such as stairs, ramps, and multiple reachable elevations. This…
Safe autonomous exploration of unknown environments is an essential skill for mobile robots to effectively and adaptively perform environmental mapping for diverse critical tasks. Due to its simplicity, most existing exploration methods…
This article establishes the Exploration-RRT algorithm: A novel general-purpose combined exploration and pathplanning algorithm, based on a multi-goal Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees (RRT) framework. Exploration-RRT (ERRT) has been…
We present a planning framework designed for humanoid navigation over challenging terrain. This framework is designed to plan a traversable, smooth, and collision-free path using a 2.5D height map. The planner is comprised of two stages.…
Autonomous navigation in unknown environments is a fundamental challenge in robotics, particularly in coordinating ground and aerial robots to maximize exploration efficiency. This paper presents a novel approach that utilizes a…
To achieve autonomy in unknown and unstructured environments, we propose a method for semantic-based planning under perceptual uncertainty. This capability is crucial for safe and efficient robot navigation in environment with…
This paper addresses the problem of optimizing communicated information among heterogeneous, resource-aware robot teams to facilitate their navigation. In such operations, a mobile robot compresses its local map to assist another robot in…
We propose a novel holistic approach for safe autonomous exploration and map building based on constrained Bayesian optimisation. This method finds optimal continuous paths instead of discrete sensing locations that inherently satisfy…
An unmanned autonomous vehicle (UAV) is sent on a mission to explore and reconstruct an unknown environment from a series of measurements collected by Bayesian optimization. The success of the mission is judged by the UAV's ability to…
This paper introduces a new method for robot motion planning and navigation in uneven environments through a surfel representation of underlying point clouds. The proposed method addresses the shortcomings of state-of-the-art navigation…
Although autonomy has gained widespread usage in structured and controlled environments, robotic autonomy in unknown and off-road terrain remains a difficult problem. Extreme, off-road, and unstructured environments such as undeveloped…
Exploration of the lunar south pole with a solar-powered rover is challenging due to the highly dynamic solar illumination conditions and the presence of permanently shadowed regions (PSRs). In turn, careful planning in space and time is…
Efficient UAV exploration in unknown environments requires rapid coverage expansion while maintaining accurate and reliable localization, since safe navigation in complex scenes depends on consistent mapping and pose estimation. However,…
Safely exploring environments with a-priori unknown constraints is a fundamental challenge that restricts the autonomy of robots. While safety is paramount, guarantees on sufficient exploration are also crucial for ensuring autonomous task…