Soil Sample Search in Partially Observable Environments

Abstract: To work in unknown outdoor environments, autonomous sampling machines need the ability to target samples despite limited visibility and robotic arm reach distance. We design a heuristic guided search method to speed up the search process and more efficiently localize the approximate center of soil regions. Through simulation experiments, we assess the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and discover superior performance in terms of speed, distance traveled, and success rate compared to naive baselines.