Related papers: Asymptotically Optimal Ergodic Coverage on General…
In this paper we tackle the problem of persistently covering a complex non-convex environment with a team of robots. We consider scenarios where the coverage quality of the environment deteriorates with time, requiring to constantly revisit…
One of the goals of active information acquisition using multi-robot teams is to keep the relative uncertainty in each region at the same level to maintain identical acquisition quality (e.g., consistent target detection) in all the…
Autonomous underwater robots are increasingly deployed for environmental monitoring, infrastructure inspection, subsea resource exploration, and long-horizon exploration. Yet, despite rapid advances in learning-based planning and control,…
In disaster response scenarios, deploying robotic teams effectively is crucial for improving situational awareness and enhancing search and rescue operations. The use of robots in search and rescue has been studied but the question of where…
Online coverage planning can be useful in applications like field monitoring and search and rescue. Without prior information of the environment, achieving resolution-complete coverage considering the non-holonomic mobility constraints in…
Safe autonomous navigation is an essential and challenging problem for robots operating in highly unstructured or completely unknown environments. Under these conditions, not only robotic systems must deal with limited localisation…
Volumetric objectives for exploration and perception tasks seek to capture a sense of value (or reward) for hypothetical observations at one or more camera views for robots operating in unknown environments. For example, a volumetric…
Terrain adaptation is an essential capability for a ground robot to effectively traverse unstructured off-road terrain in real-world field environments such as forests. However, the expected robot behaviors generated by terrain adaptation…
Safe deployment of autonomous robots in diverse scenarios requires agents that are capable of efficiently adapting to new environments while satisfying constraints. In this work, we propose a practical and theoretically-justified approach…
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…
The area coverage problem is the task of efficiently servicing a given two-dimensional surface using sensors mounted on robots such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). We present a novel formulation for…
The ability to efficiently and effectively explore planetary surfaces is currently limited by the capability of wheeled rovers to traverse challenging terrains, and by pre-programmed data acquisition plans with limited in-situ flexibility.…
This paper addresses the challenge of active perception within autonomous navigation in complex, unknown environments. Revisiting the foundational principles of active perception, we introduce an end-to-end reinforcement learning framework…
Autonomous robot person-following (RPF) systems are crucial for personal assistance and security but suffer from target loss due to occlusions in dynamic, unknown environments. Current methods rely on pre-built maps and assume static…
Autonomous 3D acquisition of outdoor environments poses special challenges. Different from indoor scenes, where the room space is delineated by clear boundaries and separations (e.g., walls and furniture), an outdoor environment is spacious…
As robots operate in increasingly complex and dynamic environments, fast motion re-planning has become a widely explored area of research. In a real-world deployment, we often lack the ability to fully observe the environment at all times,…
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been increasingly used for exploring areas. Many mobility algorithms were designed to achieve a fast coverage of a given area. We focus on analysing the expected coverage of the symmetric random walk…
In mobile robotics, coverage navigation refers to the deliberate movement of a robot with the purpose of covering a certain area or volume. Performing this task properly is fundamental for the execution of several activities, for instance,…
In robotic applications, a key requirement for safe and efficient motion planning is the ability to map obstacle-free space in unknown, cluttered 3D environments. However, commodity-grade RGB-D cameras commonly used for sensing fail to…
Developing autonomous agents that quickly explore an environment and adapt their behavior online is a canonical challenge in robotics and machine learning. While humans are able to achieve such fast online exploration and adaptation, often…