Agents of Exploration and Discovery

Abstract

Autonomous agents have many applications in familiar situations, but they also have great potential to help us understand novel settings. In this paper, we propose a new challenge for the research community: developing embodied systems that not only explore new environments but that also acquire scientific knowledge characterizing them. Illustrative examples include autonomous rovers on planetary surfaces and unmanned vehicles on undersea missions. We review two relevant paradigms: robotic agents that explore unknown areas and computational systems that discover scientific models. In each case, we specify the problem, identify component functions, cite prior work, and note current limitations. Finally, we discuss obstacles the community must overcome before it can develop integrated agents of exploration and discovery.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2021
Accession Number
AD1200692

Entities

People

  • Brian A. Haugh
  • Patrick W. Langley

Organizations

  • Institute for Defense Analyses

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Autonomous Agents
  • Autonomous Navigation
  • Autonomous Systems
  • Chemistry
  • Cognitive Science
  • Collision Avoidance
  • Computational Science
  • Data Mining
  • Engineering
  • Environment
  • Machine Learning
  • Seabed
  • Signal Processing
  • Simultaneous Localization And Mapping
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Unmanned Vehicles
  • Vehicles

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Theoretical Analysis.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Autonomous Systems
  • Autonomy