Active Anomaly Detection in Confined Spaces Using Ergodic Traversal of Directed Region Graphs

Abstract: We provide the first step toward developing a hierarchical control-estimation framework to actively plan robot trajectories for anomaly detection in confined spaces. The space is represented globally using a directed region graph, where a region is a landmark that needs to be visited (inspected). We devise a fast mixing Markov chain to find an ergodic route that traverses this graph so that the region visitation frequency is proportional to its anomaly detection uncertainty, while satisfying the edge directionality (region transition) constraint(s). Preliminary simulation results show fast convergence to the ergodic solution and confident estimation of the presence of anomalies in the inspected regions.