Provable Methods for Searching with an Imperfect Sensor

TL;DR

This paper develops provable algorithms for searching with an imperfect sensor using a mobile robot within a time limit, accounting for non-uniform travel times, and provides theoretical guarantees and experimental validation.

Contribution

It introduces fast algorithms with performance guarantees for search strategies considering imperfect sensing and non-uniform travel times, addressing a complex problem with theoretical and experimental insights.

Findings

Algorithms with provable performance guarantees

Effective handling of non-uniform travel times

Experimental validation of algorithm performance

Abstract

Assume that a target is known to be present at an unknown point among a finite set of locations in the plane. We search for it using a mobile robot that has imperfect sensing capabilities. It takes time for the robot to move between locations and search a location; we have a total time budget within which to conduct the search. We study the problem of computing a search path/strategy for the robot that maximizes the probability of detection of the target. Considering non-uniform travel times between points (e.g., based on the distance between them) is crucial for search and rescue applications; such problems have been investigated to a limited extent due to their inherent complexity. In this paper, we describe fast algorithms with performance guarantees for this search problem and some variants, complement them with complexity results, and perform experiments to observe their performance.