Motion planning considers the problem of moving a system from a starting position to a desired goal position. This problem has been shown to be a computationally challenging task. This mainly arises due to complexity of the system being controlled and environmental factors that occur in the real world, such as sensor noise and imperfect actuation. The system being controlled might also have many degrees of freedom, allowing more complex tasks such as manipulation of the environment. A motion planner that can handle these type of disturbances and capabilities is ideal to produce robust paths that robotic systems can follow.
The proposed work will attempt to address these issues by building off of state-of-the-art research in asymptotically optimal sampling-based motion planning. This process will involve developing an algorithm that can efficiently solve the motion planning problem for system that have dynamic constraints on their movement, e.g. car-like vehicles. By developing an algorithm that can provide optimality for dynamical systems, many other applications may be branched off of it.
The first application to explore in this direction is planning under uncertainty. The uncertainty in environment and actuation is observed in the real world whenever we use a robotic system. This uncertainty is magnified when performing extra-terrestrial rover missions from ground stations here. It would be beneficial to have an autonomous planner be able to handle these disturbances, allowing ground crew to focus on more important tasks, such as waypoint selection.More »
NASA Space Technology Fellows perform innovative space technology research and improve America's technological competitiveness by providing the Nation with a pipeline of innovative space technologies.More »
|Organizations Performing Work||Role||Type||Location|
|NASA Headquarters (HQ)||Lead Organization||NASA Center||Washington, District of Columbia|
|Ames Research Center (ARC)||Supporting Organization||NASA Center||Moffett Field, California|
|Rutgers University||Supporting Organization||Academia||Piscataway, New Jersey|
The Space Technology Research Grants (STRG) Program features a low TRL technology portfolio of groundbreaking research in advanced space technology. STRG challenges the spectrum of academic researchers - from graduate students to tenured faculty members - to examine the theoretical feasibility of ideas and approaches that are critical to making science, space travel, and exploration more effective, affordable, and sustainable. The NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities solicitation (which replaces the NASA Space Technology Research Fellowships solicitation) seeks to sponsor graduate student researchers who show significant potential to contribute to NASA’s goal of creating innovative new space technologies for our Nation’s science, exploration, and economic future.
Project website: https://www.nasa.gov/spacetech/strg/2013_nstrf_littlefield.htmlMore »
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