Theory and applications of cooperative navigation

能够自主操作的移动设备在偏远、恶劣、不确定和动态的环境中尤其重要，在这些环境中，人类的存在要么是不可能的，要么是以某种方式受到阻碍，要么是非常不受欢迎的（例如，在其他星球上、海底、地下矿井中）。车辆自动驾驶的一个关键要素是“导航”；也就是说，移动机器人相对于其环境估计其姿态的能力，这在这种缺乏gps的环境中是困难的。这项拨款申请的本质源于这样一种认识，即将新兴的协同控制领域的思想与车辆导航中的实际问题相结合，存在着一个重要的、很大程度上尚未开发的机会。申请人建议研究设计和应用多个车辆之间的局部交互的问题，以提高一个群体的导航能力，而不是单独工作的车辆。

Mobile equipment capable of autonomous operation is of particular relevance in remote, harsh, uncertain, and dynamic environments where human presence is either not possible, hindered in some way, or highly undesirable (e.g., on other planets, undersea, in underground mines). A key ingredient of vehicle autonomy is "navigation"; that is, the ability of a mobile robot to estimate its pose with respect to its environment, which is difficult in such GPS-deprived environments. The essence of this grant application is born from a realization that there exists a significant and largely unexplored opportunity in the combination of ideas from the emerging field of cooperative control with real problems in vehicle navigation. The applicant proposes to study the problems of designing and applying local interactions among multiple vehicles to enhance a group's navigational abilities as compared with vehicles that work only individually.