Information Value-Driven Approach to Path Clearance with Multiple Scout Robots
Maxim Likhachev* and Anthony Stentz**
Abstract
In the path clearance problem the robot needs to reach its goal as
quickly as possible without being detected by enemies. The robot
does not know the precise locations of enemies, but has a list of
their possible locations. These locations can be sensed, and the
robot can go through them if no enemy is present or has to take a
detour otherwise. We have previously developed an approach to the
path clearance problem when the robot itself had to sense possible
enemy locations. In this paper we investigate the problem of path
clearance when the robot can use multiple scout robots to sense the
possible enemy locations. This becomes a high-dimensional planning
under uncertainty problem. We propose an efficient and scalable
approach to it. While the approach requires centralized planning, it
can scale to very large environments and to a large number of scouts
and allows the scouts to be heterogenous. The experimental results
show the benefits of using our approach when multiple scout robots
are available.