Lab Papers (GRASP)

Document Type

Conference Paper

Date of this Version

5-19-2008

Comments

Copyright 2008 IEEE. Reprinted from:
Likhachev, M.; Stentz, A., "Information value-driven approach to path clearance with multiple scout robots," Robotics and Automation, 2008. ICRA 2008. IEEE International Conference on , vol., no., pp.2651-2656, 19-23 May 2008
URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4543612&isnumber=4543169

This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Such permission of the IEEE does not in any way imply IEEE endorsement of any of the University of Pennsylvania's products or services. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to pubs-permissions@ieee.org. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.

Abstract

In the path clearance problem the robot needs to reach its goal as quickly as possible without being detected by enemies. The robot does not know the precise locations of enemies, but has a list of their possible locations. These locations can be sensed, and the robot can go through them if no enemy is present or has to take a detour otherwise. We have previously developed an approach to the path clearance problem when the robot itself had to sense possible enemy locations. In this paper we investigate the problem of path clearance when the robot can use multiple scout robots to sense the possible enemy locations. This becomes a high-dimensional planning under uncertainty problem. We propose an efficient and scalable approach to it. While the approach requires centralized planning, it can scale to very large environments and to a large number of scouts and allows the scouts to be heterogenous. The experimental results show the benefits of using our approach when multiple scout robots are available.

Keywords

military systems, mobile robots, motion control, path planning, centralized planning, enemy locations, information value-driven approach, multiple scout robots, path clearance problem, planning under uncertainty problem

Share

COinS
 

Date Posted: 01 October 2009