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INFORMATIVE PATH PLANNING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL
MONITORING
by
Jonathan Douglas Binney
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMPUTER SCIENCE)
December 2012
Copyright 2012 Jonathan Douglas Binney
Object Description
| Title | Informative path planning for environmental monitoring |
| Author | Binney, Jonathan Douglas |
| Author email | jon.binney@gmail.com;jon.binney@gmail.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Computer Science |
| School | Viterbi School of Engineering |
| Date defended/completed | 2012-01-31 |
| Date submitted | 2012-10-14 |
| Date approved | 2012-10-14 |
| Restricted until | 2012-10-14 |
| Date published | 2012-10-14 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Sukhatme, Gaurav S. |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Schaal, Stefan Caron, David A. |
| Abstract | Mobile aquatic, aerial, and terrestrial robots open up rich opportunities for environmental monitoring. Sensors mounted on a robot can be moved to take measurements in multiple locations, allowing an effective spatial sampling density much higher than the number of robots. In order to most effectively exploit mobile robots in this manner, path planning methods which consider the usefulness of measurements are needed. This thesis studies and develops discrete planning algorithms for optimal usage of mobile robots in environmental monitoring applications. Specifically, we address cases where a probabilistic model (e.g., a Gaussian process) is used to predict a scalar field. In this context, the usefulness of a set of measurements collected by a robot or team of robots can be quantified as the expected reduction in entropy or mean squared error, providing a well defined objective function for the planner. We present path planning approaches which take advantage of the characteristics of these objective functions to efficiently plan optimal or near optimal paths for one or more robots. ❧ This thesis makes the following contributions. First, we present extensions to a submodular orienteering algorithm which increases its usefulness for environmental monitoring applications. Specifically, we show how to handle temporally changing fields, and how to efficiently incorporate sensors which take measurements while the robot is moving. Second, we present a branch and bound algorithm which adapts an upper bound from feature selection literature to efficiently find the optimal solution to an informative path planning problem. Finally, we provide results from tests of the algorithms on real robotic problems, including ocean monitoring using underwater gliders, and lake monitoring using an autonomous surface vehicle. |
| Keyword | robotics; path planning; environmental monitoring |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Binney, Jonathan Douglas |
| Physical access | The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given. |
| Repository name | University of Southern California Digital Library |
| Repository address | USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume4/etd-BinneyJona-1247.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | INFORMATIVE PATH PLANNING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING by Jonathan Douglas Binney A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (COMPUTER SCIENCE) December 2012 Copyright 2012 Jonathan Douglas Binney |
