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Main Authors: Poudel, Prakash, DesRoches, Jeffrey, Cowlagi, Raghvendra V.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.10236
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author Poudel, Prakash
DesRoches, Jeffrey
Cowlagi, Raghvendra V.
author_facet Poudel, Prakash
DesRoches, Jeffrey
Cowlagi, Raghvendra V.
contents We address the problem of path-planning for an autonomous mobile vehicle, called the ego vehicle, in an unknown andtime-varying environment. The objective is for the ego vehicle to minimize exposure to a spatiotemporally-varying unknown scalar field called the threat field. Noisy measurements of the threat field are provided by a network of mobile sensors. Weaddress the problem of optimally configuring (placing) these sensors in the environment. To this end, we propose sensor reconfiguration by maximizing a reward function composed of three different elements. First, the reward includes an informa tion measure that we call context-relevant mutual information (CRMI). Unlike typical sensor placement techniques that maxi mize mutual information of the measurements and environment state, CRMI directly quantifies uncertainty reduction in the ego path cost while it moves in the environment. Therefore, the CRMI introduces active coupling between the ego vehicle and the sensor network. Second, the reward includes a penalty on the distances traveled by the sensors. Third, the reward includes a measure of proximity of the sensors to the ego vehicle. Although we do not consider communication issues in this paper, such proximity is of relevance for future work that addresses communications between the sensors and the ego vehicle. We illustrate and analyze the proposed technique via numerical simulations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_10236
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Actively Coupled Sensor Configuration and Planning in Unknown Dynamic Environments
Poudel, Prakash
DesRoches, Jeffrey
Cowlagi, Raghvendra V.
Systems and Control
We address the problem of path-planning for an autonomous mobile vehicle, called the ego vehicle, in an unknown andtime-varying environment. The objective is for the ego vehicle to minimize exposure to a spatiotemporally-varying unknown scalar field called the threat field. Noisy measurements of the threat field are provided by a network of mobile sensors. Weaddress the problem of optimally configuring (placing) these sensors in the environment. To this end, we propose sensor reconfiguration by maximizing a reward function composed of three different elements. First, the reward includes an informa tion measure that we call context-relevant mutual information (CRMI). Unlike typical sensor placement techniques that maxi mize mutual information of the measurements and environment state, CRMI directly quantifies uncertainty reduction in the ego path cost while it moves in the environment. Therefore, the CRMI introduces active coupling between the ego vehicle and the sensor network. Second, the reward includes a penalty on the distances traveled by the sensors. Third, the reward includes a measure of proximity of the sensors to the ego vehicle. Although we do not consider communication issues in this paper, such proximity is of relevance for future work that addresses communications between the sensors and the ego vehicle. We illustrate and analyze the proposed technique via numerical simulations.
title Actively Coupled Sensor Configuration and Planning in Unknown Dynamic Environments
topic Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.10236