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特别重要，在这些环境中，人的存在要么不可能，要么以某种方式受到阻碍，要么非常不受欢迎(例如，在其他星球上、海底、地下矿山)。车辆自主性的一个关键因素是“导航”，即移动机器人估计其相对于环境的姿态的能力，这在这种缺乏GPS的环境中是困难的。这项赠款申请的实质是认识到，在将新兴的合作控制领域的想法与车辆导航的实际问题相结合方面，存在着一个重大的、基本上未被探索的机会。申请人建议研究设计和应用多个车辆之间的局部相互作用的问题，以增强与仅单独工作的车辆相比的群体导航能力。

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.