CAREER: Generalizations in Obstacle Avoidance Theory

该项目开发了一个理论框架，可以对避障制导律进行分析表征，并对这些律进行实验验证。这具有重要意义，因为避障问题是路径规划问题的重要组成部分，路径规划问题出现在几个不同的领域，包括机器人，自主空中，地面和水下航行器，计算机动画，分子运动，自主轮椅，航天器避免空间碎片，机器人手术，盲人辅助设备等。所设计的导引律特别适用于在混乱动态环境中实时实现精确路径规划，如包含机器人操纵器、人形机器人、编队飞行车辆等高维空间中，agent对其所处环境没有先验信息。对设计的制导律进行了对各种不确定性（如传感器噪声、数据延迟和数据丢失）的鲁棒性分析，然后进行了实验验证，其中制导律以资源高效的方式在微控制器平台上编码，并在小型机器人地面和空中飞行器上实现。预期结果包括适合于在高维随机环境中运动的各种形状（可能时变的）障碍物的避碰的制导律，以及这些制导律的安全保证的假设。该项目还开展了多种推广活动，并引入了促进机器人教育和应用的新课程，这些活动从K-12一直到本科和研究生水平的工程教育。

This project develops a theoretical framework that enables an analytical characterization of guidance laws for obstacle avoidance, accompanied by an experimental validation of these laws. This has significant implications since the obstacle avoidance problem is an important component of the path planning problem, which appears in several diverse fields including robotics, autonomous air, ground and underwater vehicles, computer animation, molecular motion, autonomous wheelchairs, spacecraft avoiding space debris, robotic surgery, assistance aids for the blind, etc. The guidance laws designed are particularly applicable for real-time implementation of precise path planning in cluttered dynamic environments such as those containing robot manipulators, humanoid robots, vehicles flying in formation and other high-dimensional spaces wherein the agents have no a priori information about their environment. A robustness analysis of the designed guidance laws to various uncertainties such as sensor noise, data delays and data dropouts is performed, followed by an experimental validation wherein the guidance laws are coded on microcontroller platforms in a resource-efficient manner and implemented on small-scale robotic ground and air vehicles. The expected results include guidance laws suitable for collision avoidance of obstacles of various, possibly time-varying, shapes moving in high-dimensional stochastic environments, along with a postulation of the safety guarantees of these guidance laws. This project also performs multiple outreach activities and introduces new curriculum that promote the education and applications of robotics, and these activities are conducted in levels starting from K-12 all the way through undergraduate and graduate level engineering education.