Title
Embedded Stochastic Field Exploration with Micro Diving Agents using Bayesian Optimization-Guided Tree-Search and GMRFs
Abstract
Exploration and monitoring of hazardous fields in marine environments is one of the most promising tasks to be performed by fleets of low-cost micro autonomous underwater vehicles (mu AUVs). In contrast to vehicles in other domains, underwater robots are forced to perform all computations onboard as no powerful communication links are available underwater. This puts the focus on computationally efficient field exploration algorithms. We propose CBTS-GMRF - an extremely light-weight tree-search exploration framework suitable for embedded computing. With our framework we build on recent work in POMDP-exploration and field belief representations based on efficient Gaussian Markov random fields (GMRF). We propose a reward function for energy-efficient field exploration together with a sparse trajectory parameterization. By reducing both, energy consumption and computational complexity, we enable underwater field exploration with mu AUVs. We benchmark the performance of our exploration framework in simulation against state-of-the-art exploratory planning schemes and provide an experimental study using a low-cost micro diving agent. In order to support community-wide algorithm benchmarking, our code and robot design can be accessed online.
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1109/IROS51168.2021.9635962
2021 IEEE/RSJ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS AND SYSTEMS (IROS)
DocType
ISSN
Citations 
Conference
2153-0858
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Daniel-André Duecker142.86
Benedikt Mersch200.34
Rene C. Hochdahl300.34
Edwin Kreuzer400.34