We investigate the problem of finding paths that enable a robot modeled as Dubins car (i.e., constant-speed finite-turn-rate unicycle) to escape from circular region space in minimum time. This minimum-time arises marine, aerial, and ground robotics situations where safety has been violated must be exited before potential negative consequence occurs (e.g., collision). Using tools nonlinear opti...

A vision-based system for detecting and classifying moving obstacles in a cluttered environment using a single camera mounted on a small unmanned aerial vehicle is presented. Feature correspondences between successive image frames are found using the SIFT algorithm, and a model of the background motion is generated by Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC). The transformed frames are then differenced...

We extend the foundation of probability in samples with rare events that are potentially catastrophic, called black swans, such as natural hazards, market crashes, catastrophic climate change, and species extinction. Such events are generally treated as “outliers” and disregarded. We propose a new axiomatization of probability requiring equal treatment in the measurement of rare and frequent ev...

In this paper, we describe trajectory planning and state estimation algorithms for aggressive flight of micro aerial vehicles in known, obstacledense environments. Finding aggressive but dynamically feasible and collision-free trajectories in cluttered environments requires trajectory optimization and state estimation in the full state space of the vehicle, which is usually computationally infe...

This paper presents an algorithm that constructs a fastest curvature-constrained path in a directiondependent environment for a given initial and target locations and heading angles. The problem studied here is a generalization of the classical Dubins car problem, where the vehicle speed and minimumturning radius are assumed to be constant. This assumption is relaxed and the settings where the ...

In this study, reference path generation based on waypoints, Dubins curves and obstacle avoidance are focused. The motion of a wheeled robot vehicle is modeled by following the principles of point mass approach. While motion planning is performed, the importance of obtaining the shortest distance between two target points is illustrated. Dubins curves and waypoints are used to construct an opti...

It is well known that the sufficient family of time-optimal paths for both Dubins’ as well as Reeds-Shepp’s car models consist of the concatenation of circular arcs with maximum curvature and straight line segments, all tangentially connected. These time-optimal solutions suffer from some drawbacks. Their discontinuous curvature profile, together with the wear and impairment on the control equi...