IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2010) Workshop

Search and Pursuit/Evasion in the Physical World:
Efficiency, Scalability, and Guarantees

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Full-Day Workshop

This workshop will bring together researchers in all areas of pursuit/evasion and search. This includes (but is not limited to) geometric approaches, probabilistic optimization, graph theoretic search, decision theoretic planning, and adversarial search. The primary focus will be on single-robot and multi-robot search, which includes unmanned ground (UGVs), aerial (UAVs), surface (USVs), and underwater (UUVs) vehicles, as well as heterogeneous search teams in both outdoor and indoor environments. Various sensors, including cameras and laser scanners, will be examined, and search for both adversarial and non-adversarial targets will be considered. The theme of this workshop is to unify various formulations of the search problem and move towards a common theoretical and applied framework for search with autonomous robots. This workshop also will be of interest to those working in the general areas of multi-agent systems, distributed computation, and approximation algorithms.

Organizers

Geoffrey Hollinger (Carnegie Mellon University)
Volkan Isler (University of Minnesota)
Timothy H. Chung (Naval Postgraduate School)

Important Dates

• Contributed papers due: March 5, 2010 (deadline has passed)
• Notification of acceptance: March 18, 2010 (authors have been notified)
• Revised contributions due (page limit 8 pages): April 6, 2010 (deadline has passed)
• Full-day workshop at ICRA 2010 in Anchorage, Alaska: 9:30 am - 5:30 pm, May 3, 2010

List of Topics

The common theme of this workshop is the unification of various formulations of the search and pursuit/evasion problems, which includes papers spanning one or more of the following threads:

• Graph search and theoretical foundations
• Geometric approaches to search in polygonal environments
• Adversarial search on discrete and continuous representations
• Game theoretic approaches to search
• Distributed planning and estimation for multiple searchers
• The role of sensing and perception for search
• Urban search and rescue and emergency response with mobile robots
• Search with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and/or Unmanned Underwater Vehicles
• Combining search and target tracking
• Search systems and applications

Invited Talks [Abstracts]

1. Interactive Multi-Robot Planning and Multi-Agent Simulation
    Dinesh Manocha (UNC Chapel Hill)
2. Motion Planning for People Tracking in Uncertain and Dynamic Environments
   David Hsu (National Univ. Singapore)
3. Bio-inspired Risk Avoidance and Dynamic Coverage Control for Autonomous Agent Teams
   Karl Hedrick and Shih-Yuan (Univ. California Berkeley)
4. Algorithms and Complexity Results for Pursuit-Evasion Problems
   Richard Borie, Kenny Daniel, Sven Koenig and Craig Tovey (Univ. Alabama, Univ. Southern California, Georgia Tech)
5. Solving Pursuit-evasion Problem with Graph-Clear: an Overview
   Andreas Kolling and Stefano Carpin (Univ. California Merced)
6. Belief-driven Cooperative Search and Tracking
   Tomonari Furukawa (Virginia Tech)

Contributed Posters [Abstracts]

1.  Demonstration of Multi-Robot Search and Secure
   Fotios Katsilieris, Magnus Lindhé, Dimos V. Dimarogonas, Petter Ögren and Karl H. Johansson (KTH Sweden, MIT, FOI Sweden)
2. Multi-Robot Teamwork in Multistatic Sonar
   Frank Ehlers (NATO Undersea Research Centre)
3. Optimal Strategies to Evade Jamming in Heterogeneous Mobile Networks
   Sourabh Bhattacharya and Tamer Başar (Univ. Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
4. A Decision-Theoretic Framework to Select Effective Observation Locations in Robotic Search and Rescue Scenarios 
   Francesco Amigoni and Nicola Basilico (Politecnico di Milano)
5. Intelligent Pursuit & Evasion in Unknown Environments against Human Players
   Jonathan Annas and Jing Xiao (UNC Charlotte)
6. Online Probabilistic Pursuit of Adversarial Evaders
   Johannes Strom, Ryan Morton, Kevin Reilly and Edwin Olson (Univ. Michigan)
7. Visibility-Based Strategies for Searching and Tracking Unpredictable Coherent Targets Among Known Obstacles
   Christopher Vo and Jyh-Ming Lien (George Mason Univ.)
8. Solving Pursuit-Evasion Problems on Height Maps
   Andreas Kolling, Alexander Kleiner, Michael Lewis and Katia Sycara (Univ. Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon Univ.)
9.  Fault-Tolerant Multi-Robot Area Coverage with Limited Visibility
   Pooyan Fazli, Alireza Davoodi, Philippe Pasquier, and Alan K. Mackworth (Univ. British Columbia, Simon Fraser Univ.)

Program Committee

• Geoffrey Hollinger, Carnegie Mellon University
• Volkan Isler, University of Minnesota
• Timothy H. Chung, Naval Postgraduate School
• David Hsu, National Univ. of Singapore
• Dinesh Manocha, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Stefano Carpin, Univ. of California at Merced
• Sven Koenig, Univ. of Southern California