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Netbot Laboratory, TAMU
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Searching for objects in physical space is one of the most common tasks for robots. Transient targets refer to a class of objects which are not identifiable unless momentary sensing and/or signaling conditions are satisfied. The transient property is often introduced by target attributes, privacy concerns, environment constraints, and/or sensing limitations. For example, searching for a black box on the ocean floor after an airplane crash is a typical transient target search (TTS) task because the search relies on the transient radio/sonar signals emitted from the black box. This project develops the theoretical foundations for TTS problems that will impact a large group of real world applications. Due to their stochastic nature, TTS problems are challenging because the transient property is often coupled with factors such as sensing range limits, various coverage functions, constrained mobility, signal correspondence, limited number of searchers, and a vast searching region. Extensive modeling and analysis will be performed to understand the various factors in the searching process.

News and Events

May 23rd, 14

Our paper entitled "Cooperative Search of Multiple Unknown Transient Radio Sources Using Multiple Paired Mobile Robots" has been fully accepted byh IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

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May 6th, 13

Our paper entitled "Decentralized Searching of Multiple Unknown and Transient Radio Sources" has been presented at IEEE ICRA 2013.

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Sponsor

This project is supported in part by NSF IIS-1318638.