Obstacle Avoidance, Path Planning and Collaborative Operations

Exploratory path planning with obstacle avoidance finds application in areas involving autonomous search and exploration tasks like mine sweeping, rescue operations, locating survivors in a disaster struck area, ocean exploration, monitoring coast lines, protecting borders etc. Under support from a SBIR phase II grant from NASA, UtopiaCompression Corporation (UC) has developed expertise in path planning and obstacle avoidance. UC already demonstrated the application of fractal based space filling curves to compute efficient exploration tours. UC is currently working on a step by step program with Carnegie Melon University, NASA Goddard space flight center and Lockheed Martin Corporation to deploy its path-planning and obstacle detection capability for the Tele-operated Adaptive Ocean Sensor Fleet project.

Adaptive multi-resolution tiling and path planning for optimal exploration

Obstacle detection and avoidance capability

UC is developing its capabilities on obstacle detection and avoidance, tracking obstacles and estimating the range using stereo sensors for maritime environments.

UC team conducting field tests at Marina Del Rey, CA

Publications:

A.Tiwari, H.Chandra, J. Yadegar, J.Wang “Constructing Optimal Cyclic Tours for Planar Exploration and Obstacle Avoidance: A Graph Theory Approach”, Advances in Cooperative Control and Optimization, Springer, 2007.