PhD Thesis Proposal Defence


"Online Exploration and Search in Graphs"

By Mr. Gerhard Trippen


Abstract:

There are three fundamental online problems in robotics:
navigation/search, localization, and exploration. Constructing a complete
map of an unknown environment while using a short path is the task of
autonomous robots when they have to explore the whole environment. Besides
the practical problems that arise when an autonomous robot needs to travel
through real terrain there is the question how good will the robot perform
compared to an optimal strategy that has complete knowledge of the
environment and can plan an exploration path in advance. The robot must
always decide its further movements online and with only the partial
knowledge of the already explored environment.

Different models of the environment lead to different algorithms that try
to cope with the difficulties given by the particular modeling. The
advantage of modeling environments as graphs lies in the fact that the
geometric features are neglected and one can concentrate on the
combinatorial aspects of the exploration problem. While we are focusing on
directed graphs in the case of exploration we consider both directed
graphs and undirected graphs for the search problem, in which the robot
needs to find a specific goal.


Date:     		Wednesday, 14 September 2005

Time:                   3:30p.m.-5:30p.m.

Venue:                  Room 4480
			lifts 25-26

Committee Members:      Dr. Mordecai Golin (Supervisor)
                        Dr. Fangzhen Lin (Chairperson)
			Dr. Sunil Arya
			Prof. Derick Wood


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