Benavides Olivera, Facundo

Research interests

Motion Planning in Mobile Autonomous Robotics and Multi-robot Cooperative Exploration
Mobile autonomous robotics has been developed mainly to make it possible for machines to perform high-level tasks without the need for human control.
The exploration problem has been widely studied since the beginning of mobile robotics as it is considered one of the fundamental problems. The task of exploration refers to the complete coverage of previously unknown environments to optimise certain criteria or performance measures. The total time needed to complete the task is typically one of the most commonly used. Due to their recognised qualities (mainly efficiency, adaptability and robustness), it is natural to use multi-robot systems to perform this task. In multi-robot systems dedicated to cooperative exploration, map building and movement planning are considered cooperative actions. Each robot must be able to perform them individually. But, they can only benefit from group work if they coordinate actions during the process. In this sense, communication between team members becomes a critical aspect.
Currently, there are several real-world scenarios where exploration of the environment is considered one of the main parts of the mission. These scenarios include surveillance, search and rescue, extraplanetary exploration, agriculture, clearance, transport or exploration of high-risk areas (minefields or contaminated areas).
Exploration can also be understood as the intermediation of planning and mapping tasks.
Planning its movements is one of the most important problems in the design of mobile autonomous robots. Such planning usually involves modelling the environment, dealing with incomplete information, uncertainty in sensor readings, avoiding obstacles - possibly unpredictable in their movements -, knowing the bodies' kinematics, and handling multiple robots and targets. Generally, the task consists of finding an optimal or sub-optimal collision-free path between an initial and a final configuration or state, following certain criteria to evaluate the optimality of the examined paths.

Working area

I am currently developing my lines of research using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to address civil infrastructure inspection problems (inspection of sewage pipelines, buildings, and wind turbines) and agricultural inspection problems (crop inspection, pest bird deterrence).