Estimation, Search, and Planning (ESP) Research Group

Recent News

1. ESP @ ICRA 2026 — Real-time incremental planning

   Mitchell and Tyler have an exciting paper on planning in unknown, changing, and dynamic environments at ICRA 2026 in Vienna, Austria. We show that modern a.s.a.o. planners are now so fast that it's often better to just replan from scratch instead of updating an existing plan. This work was in collaboration with Andrew Liu, Joseph Ruan, and Zak Kingston from the CoMMA Lab at Purdue University. We have the open access paper on arXiv, a trailer video on YouTube and we're looking forward to seeing you in Vienna at ICRA!

   

2. ICRA 2026: A^SAR — Minimum Expected-detection-time Paths for Search and Rescue (SAR)

   Eric's paper on optimal SAR planning has been accepted to ICRA 2026 in Vienna, Austria. A^SAR finds search patterns that minimize the expected detection time of an object given uncertainty about its location. There is an open access version of the paper on arXiv, a trailer video on YouTube, and we're really looking forward to sharing more about it at ICRA!

   

3. RA-L: Asymptotically Optimal RRT-Connect (AORRTC)

   Tyler's paper on asymptotically optimal RRT-Connect (AORRTC) has been published in RA-L. We'll be presenting it with Wil Thomason and Zak Kingston (CoMMA Lab, Purdue University) at ICRA 2026 and are looking forward to seeing everyone in Vienna in June 2026. The paper is already up on on arXiv with an associated video on YouTube and the algorithm available in both VAMP and OMPL.