Rahel Rickenbach

• Master of Science
• PhD Student at ETH Zurich

The problem of coverage control, i.e., of coordinating multiple agents to optimally cover an area, arises in various applications. However, coverage applications face two major challenges: (1) dealing with nonlinear dynamics while respecting system and safety critical constraints, and (2) performing the task in an initially unknown environment. We...

Inverse optimal control (IOC) is about estimating an unknown objective of interest given its optimal control sequence. However, truly optimal demonstrations are often difficult to obtain, e.g., due to human errors or inaccurate measurements. This paper presents an IOC framework for objective estimation from multiple sub-optimal demonstrations in co...

The choice of objective is critical for the performance of an optimal controller. When control requirements vary during operation, e.g. due to changes in the environment with which the system is interacting, these variations should be reflected in the cost function. In this paper we consider the problem of identifying a time dependent cost function...

The problem of coverage control, i.e., of coordinating multiple agents to optimally cover an area, arises in various applications. However, existing coverage algorithms face two major challenges: (1) dealing with nonlinear dynamics while respecting system and safety critical constraints, and (2) performing the task in an initially unknown environme...

From both an educational and research point of view, experiments on hardware are a key aspect of robotics and control. In the last decade, many open-source hardware and software frameworks for wheeled robots have been presented, mainly in the form of unicycles and car-like robots, with the goal of making robotics accessible to a wider audience and...