Title
A Probabilistic Topological Approach to Feature Identification Using a Stochastic Robotic Swarm
Abstract
This paper presents a novel automated approach to quantifying the topological features of an unknown environment using a swarm of robots with local sensing and limited or no access to global position information. The robots randomly explore the environment and record a time series of their estimated position and the covariance matrix associated with this estimate. After the robots' deployment, a point cloud indicating the free space of the environment is extracted from their aggregated data. Tools from topological data analysis, in particular the concept of persistent homology, are applied to a subset of the point cloud to construct barcode diagrams, which are used to determine the numbers of different types of features in the domain. We demonstrate that our approach can correctly identify the number of topological features in simulations with zero to four features and in multi-robot experiments with one to three features.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1007/978-3-319-73008-0_1
Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics
Keywords
Field
DocType
Unlocalized robotic swarm,Stochastic robotics,Mapping,GPS-denied environments,Topological data analysis,Algebraic topology
Topological data analysis,Topology,Algebraic topology,Swarm behaviour,Computer science,Persistent homology,Probabilistic logic,Covariance matrix,Point cloud,Robot
Conference
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
6
2511-1256
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ragesh Kumar Ramachandran145.19
Sean Wilson2243.49
Spring Berman331730.90