Energy-Aware Ergodic Search

Overview

Search and rescue and precision agriculture need a robot to be present continuously over large areas. Ergodic search already produces continuous trajectories that spend more time where information is dense, but battery-powered robots physically cannot explore forever on one charge. This work brings energy awareness into ergodic search.

How it works

• An abstract battery model predicts each robot's future state of charge.
• Ergodic search is extended to plan under battery constraints, trading battery usage against coverage quality.
• The team schedules itself so that at least one agent is always exploring, giving uninterrupted coverage.

Experiments

Simulations and real-world experiments show continuous exploration with guaranteed spatial coverage.

My role

Co-author. [Your contribution: e.g. experiments, drone hardware, implementation.]