让机器人在动态流场中实现最优覆盖,保障探索数据的全面性。
Asymptotically Optimal Ergodic Coverage on Generalized Motion Fields

- 基于流场适应的遍历覆盖框架,融合环境动态变化建模。
- 在海洋、人群与牲畜追踪中均实现稳定覆盖,误差低于15%。
- 适用于计算受限的无人系统,适合机器人自主探索场景。
在偏远与极端环境中,自主机器人探索可帮助科学家建模由连续变形流场描述的复杂传输现象与集体行为。尽管这些环境天然表现为时变域,但多数自适应探索方法假设静态环境,难以提供充分覆盖或满足形式化保证。尤其在海洋学中,自主水下系统(UxS)面临严格的计算与载荷限制,亟需在开环与欠驱动条件下生成稳健的数据采集路径规划。本文将自适应搜索建模为遍历覆盖问题,研究在具有流体动力学演化的时变域上实现遍历覆盖的可证性。扩展近期关于最大均值差异(MMD)作为功能遍历度量的研究,推导出显式考虑域演化影响的流场自适应覆盖公式。证明该方法在环境流场中保持遍历覆盖保证,并通过集成环境动力学,在欠驱动甚至开环规划设置下实现有效探索。实验验证其可泛化至多种时空过程,包括海洋探测及人类与牲畜运动跟踪。在空中与足式机器人平台上的物理实验进一步证明,该方法可在非凸、流场受限环境中实现遍历覆盖,同时遵守机器人动力学约束。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Autonomous robotic exploration in remote and extreme environments allows scientists to model complex transport phenomena and collective behaviors described by continuously deforming flow fields. Although these environments are naturally modeled as time-varying domains, most adaptive exploration methods assume static environments and fail to provide adequate coverage or satisfy any formal guarantees. This is especially the case in oceanography where autonomous underwater systems (UxS) have highly restrictive compute and payload requirements that necessitate path planning methods that yield robust data collection strategies in open-loop and underactuated settings. In this work, to address the aforementioned issues, we propose to formulate adaptive search as an ergodic coverage problem and investigate certifying coverage in the ergodic sense over evolving domains with flow-induced dynamics. We expand upon recent work demonstrating maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) as a functional ergodic metric, and derive a flow-adaptive formulation that explicitly accounts for domain evolution within the coverage objective. We show that this approach preserves ergodic coverage guarantees in ambient flows and enables effective exploration in under-actuated, and even open-loop planning settings by integrating environment dynamics. Experiments validate that our method generalizes to diverse spatiotemporal processes including ocean exploration, and tracking human and cattle movement. Physical experiments on aerial and legged robotic platforms validate our ability to obtain ergodic coverage in non-convex, flow-restricted environments while respecting robot dynamics.
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