Jacob Robbins, Shawna Thomas, Mahjabin Chowdhury, Jonan Phillip Donaldson,
in Proc. of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), June 2023.
Publications
Randomized Motion Planning Algorithms
Randomized motion planning algorithms can be applied to any type of robot, from simple rigid bodies to complex articulated linkages. We abstract the particular motion planning problem into configuration space (C-space) where each point in C-space represents a particular configuration/placement of the robot. Invalid configurations (e.g., in-collision, high energy) become C-obstacles in this higher dimensional space. We then use randomized sampling to construct a graph or tree in C-space and use this data structure to extract feasible trajectories. We explore different general purpose techniques to improve planner performance as well as applications to computational biology.
Engineering Education
Peer Access Supports Community Values: A Social Network Analysis of Computer Science and Engineering Undergraduates
Rachelle Pederson, Megan Patterson, Shawna Thomas, in Proc. of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, April 2023.
Collaborative Project-Based Learning through Design Thinking for Engaged Learning Framework in Multiple Disciplines
Sean Kao, Jesus Ojeda Pacheco, Justin Thamsorn, Haley Williams, Shawna Thomas, Sushil Paudyal, Jonan Phillip Donaldson, in Proc. of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, April 2023.
Pre-Course Survey for Reducing Day One Anxiety and Questions
Randy Brooks, Shawna Thomas, Texas Conference on Student Success, College Station, TX, USA, October 2022.
Lessons Learned: Faculty Watch Parties are a Powerful Approach to Foster Diversity and Inclusivity Discussions
Malini Natarajarathinam, Michael Johnson, Lance White, Sara Amani, Samantha Ray, Larry Powell, Tracy Hammond, Shawna Thomas, Robert Lightfoot, Rachelle Pedersen, J. Michael Moore, in Proc. of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN, USA, August 2022.
There and Back Again: Lessons Learned from Facilitated Faculty Discussions on the Move Online and then Back Face to Face
Shawna Thomas, Tracy Hammond, Kristi Shryock, Randy Brooks, Donna Jaison, Lance White, Robert Lightfoot, in Proc. of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN, USA, August 2022.
Design Thinking as a Structure for Collaborative Project-based Learning in Multiple Disciplines
Jonan Phillip Donaldson, Kati Stoddard, Summer Odom, Dawn Parker, Sushil Paudyal, Shawna Thomas, Kathrin Dunlap, Tazim Jamal, in Proc. of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), edited by Clark Chinn, Edna Tan, Carol Chan, Yael Kali, Hiroshima, Japan: International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS), June 2022.
The Power of the Pre-Course Survey for Course Launch, Addressing Concerns, and Developing Community
Randy Brooks, Shawna Thomas, Transformational Teaching and Learning Conference (TTLC), Texas A&M University, May 2022.
Quick-Fire Rotations for Discussions and Perspective Taking
Shawna Thomas, Robert Lightfoot, Transformational Teaching and Learning Conference (TTLC), Texas A&M University, May 2022.
The Power of the Pre-Course Survey for Course Launch, Addressing Concerns, and Developing Community
Shawna Thomas, Randy Brooks, Robert Lightfoot, in Proc. of the ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference, March 2022.
Creating Loud Classrooms: Sharing Ideas with Each Other on How to Foster Student-to-Student Interactions in Class
Shawna Thomas, Engineering Education Faculty Group Presentation, Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation, Texas A&M University, December 2021.
Convergence in Collaborative Course Design while Remaining Virtual
Shawna Thomas, Robert Lightfoot, in Proc. of the IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), Lincoln, NE, USA, October 2021, pp. 1–8.
A Virtual Community of Practice for Enhanced Teaching and Convergence to Strengthen Student Learning, Engagement, and Inclusion
Tracy Hammond, Randy Brooks, Shawna Thomas, Charles W. Peak, Pauline Wade, Charles Patrick, Samantha Ray, Paul Taele, in Proc. of the IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), Lincoln, NE, USA, October 2021, pp. 1–8.
Creating a Supportive Space for Teaching-Focused Faculty to Write About their Teaching
Tracy Hammond, Shawna Thomas, Charles Patrick, Pauline Wade, Donna Jaison, Janie Moore, Lance White, Randy Brooks, Samantha Ray, Karen Rambo-Hernandez, Karan Watson, in Proc. of the ASEE First-Year Engineering Experience (FYEE) Conference, Virtual, August 2021.
The Disconnect Between Engineering Students’ Desire to Discuss Racial Injustice in the Classroom and Faculty Anxieties
Tracy Hammond, Samantha Ray, Paul Taele, Shawna Thomas, Karan Watson, Christine Stanley, Seth Polsley, in Proc. of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference, Virtual, July 2021.
Partners in Crime – Collaborative Course Development
Shawna Thomas, Robert Lightfoot, Transformational Teaching and Learning Conference (TTLC), Texas A&M University, May 2021.
A Virtual Community of Practice to Enhance Teaching to Strengthen Student Learning
Tracy Hammond, Randy Brooks, Shawna Thomas, Charles W. Peak, Charles Patrick, Pauline Wade, Transformational Teaching and Learning Conference (TTLC), Texas A&M University, May 2021.
Using Course Maps to Reimagine Course Design and Student Engagement
Shawna Thomas, Robert Lightfoot, Transformational Teaching and Learning Conference (TTLC), Texas A&M University, May 2021.
Reimagining Diversity and Inclusion Activities: Raising Awareness through an Accessible Conversation about Key Contributions
Shawna Thomas, Charles Peak, Transformational Teaching and Learning Conference (TTLC), Texas A&M University, May 2021.
The Power of a Writing Community Group
Tracy Hammond, Randy Brooks, Shawna Thomas, Robert Lightfoot, Transformational Teaching and Learning Conference (TTLC), Texas A&M University, May 2021.
How to Systematically Improve Teaching, Start Conducting Engineering Education Research, and Engage in External Service Related to Engineering Education
Tracy Hammond, Michael Johnson, Jacques Richard, Kristi Shryock, Shawna Thomas, Tanya Wickliff, Engineering Education Faculty Group Panel Discussion, Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation, Texas A&M University, March 2021.
Best Practices in Robotics Education: Perspectives from an IEEE RAS Women in Engineering Panel
Shawna Thomas, IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, vol 28, issue 1, March 2021, pp. 12-15.
The Development of a Texas A&M University Faculty of Engineering Education
Tracy Hammond, Karan Watson, Samantha Ray, Robert Lightfoot, Drew Casey, Shawna Thomas, in Proc. of the ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference, March 2021.
Best Practices in Robotics Education
Panel Organizer and Moderator, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (IEEE-RAS) Women in Robotics Panel Discussion, December 2020.
Tips and Tricks to Increase Student Engagement
Invited Speaker at an Engineering Studio for Advanced Instruction & Learning (ESAIL) Webinar, Texas A&M University, November 2020, December 2020, January 2021.
More of Juggling Chainsaws while Riding a Unicycle: Effectively Engaging In-Person and Remote Students
Invited Speaker at a Center for Teaching Excellence Workshop, Texas A&M University, September 2020.
Creating and Implementing an Online Course Etiquette Appreciative Agreement: Recommendations and Insights for Updating Course Material and Social Expectations to Aid in the Transition to Online Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Tracy Hammond, Robert Lightfoot, Samantha Ray, Shawna Thomas, Engineering Education Faculty Technical Report, June 2020, https://hdl.handle.net /1969.1/188237.
Writing Groups 101: Who, What, Why, When, Where, How
Tracy Hammond, Robert Lightfoot, Shawna Thomas, Engineering Education Faculty Group Presentation, Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation, Texas A&M University, May 2020.
Randomized Motion Planning Algorithms
Using Guided Motion Planning to Study Binding Site Accessibility
Diane Uwacu, Abigail Ren, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the ACM International Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics: Computational Structural Bioinformatics Workshop, Virtual Event USA, September 2020.
Fast Collision Detection for Motion Planning using Shape Primitive Skeletons
Mukulika Ghosh, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics XIII (WAFR 2018), edited by Marco Morales, Lydia Tapia, G. Sanchez-Ante, Seth Hutchinson, Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 14, Springer, Cham. May 2020.
Multi-Robot Task and Motion Planning With Subtask Dependencies
James Motes, Read Sandstrom, Hannah Lee, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 5(2):3338-3345, Apr 2020. Jointly published in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), June 2020.
Special Issue on the International Symposium on Robotics Research 2017 (ISRR)
Nancy M. Amato, Greg Hager, Shawna Thomas, Miguel Torres-Torriti, in the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 38(12-13):1327-1328.
Interaction Templates for Multi-Robot Systems
James Motes, Read Sandstrom, Will Adams, Tobi Ogunyale, Shawna Thomas, Nancy Amato, in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 4(3):2926-2933 2019, Jun 2019. Jointly published in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robot Systems (IROS), Nov 2019.
Special Issue on Robotics: Science and Systems 2016 (RSS)
Nancy M. Amato, Oliver Brock, Marco Morales, Shawna Thomas, in Autonomous Robots, 42(7):1299–1300, Oct 2018.
Special Issue on Robotics: Science and Systems 2016 (RSS)
Nancy M. Amato, Chinwe Ekenna, Shawna Thomas, Nicolas Roy, in the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 37(10):1115–1116, Sep 2018.
Sampling Based Motion Planning with Reachable Volumes for High Degree of Freedom Manipulators
Troy McMahon, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 37(7):779– 817, Jun 2018.
Topological Nearest-Neighbor Filtering for Sampling-based Planners
Read Sandstrom, Andrew Bregger, Ben Smith, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Brisbane, QLD, Australia, May 2018.
A General and Flexible Search Framework for Disassembly Planning
Timothy Ebinger, Sascha Kaden, Shawna Thomas, Robert Andre, Nancy M. Amato, Ulrike Thomas, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Brisbane, QLD, Australia, May 2018, pp.1–8.
Manipulation Planning with Directed Reachable Volumes
Troy McMahon, Read Sandstrom, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robot Systems (IROS), Vancouver, Canada, September 2017, pp. 4026–4033.
Motion Planning using Hierarchical Aggregation of Workspace Obstacles
Mukulika Ghosh, Shawna Thomas, Marco Morales Aguirre, Samuel Rodriguez, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robot Systems (IROS), Daejeon, Korea, October 2016, pp. 5716–5721.
Adaptive Local Learning in Sampling Based Motion Planning for Protein Folding
Chinwe Ekenna, Shawna Thomas, and Nancy Amato, Bio Med Central Systems Biology, 10(2):165–179, Aug 2016.
The Impact of Approximate Methods on Local Learning in Motion Planning
Diane Uwacu, Chinwe Ekenna, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the RSS Workshop on Robot Learning and Planning, Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 2016.
Adaptive Local Learning in Sampling Based Motion Planning for Protein Folding
Chinwe Ekenna, Shawna Thomas, and Nancy Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM), pp. 61-68, Washington DC, USA, Nov 2015.
Improved Roadmap Connection via Local Learning for Sampling Based Planners
Chinwe Ekenna, Diane Uwacu, Shawna Thomas, Nancy Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robot Systems (IROS), Hamburg, Germany, October 2015, pp. 3227–3234.
Studying Learning Techniques in Different Phases of PRM Construction
Chinwe Ekenna, Diane Uwacu, Shawna Thomas, Nancy Amato, in the Machine Learning in Planning and Control of Robot Motion Workshop (IROS-MLPC), Hamburg, Germany, October 2015.
Using Motion Planning to Rank Ligand Binding Affinity
Hsin-Yi (Cindy) Yeh, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Health Informatics (BCB), Atlanta, GA, USA, September 2015, Association for Computing Machinery: New York, NY, USA, pp. 529–530.
Decoy Database Improvement for Protein Folding
Hsin-Yi (Cindy) Yeh, Aaron Lindsey, Chih-Peng Wu, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in the Journal of Computational Biology (JCB), 22(9):823–836, September 2015.
Reachable Volume RRT
Troy McMahon, Shawna Thomas, and Nancy Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Seattle, Washington, May 2015, pp. 2977–2984.
Sampling-Based Motion Planning with Reachable Volumes: Application to Manipulators and Closed Chain Systems
Troy McMahon, Shawna Thomas, and Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robot Systems (IROS), Chicago, Illinois, September 2014, pp. 3705-3712.
Improving Decoy Databases for Protein Folding Algorithms
Aaron Lindsey, Hsin-Yi (Cindy) Yeh, Chih-Peng Wu, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Health Informatics: Computational Structural Bioinformatics Workshop, Newport Beach, California, September 2014, pp. 717–724.
Improving Decoy Databases for Protein Folding Algorithms
Aaron Lindsey, Hsin-Yi (Cindy) Yeh, Chih-Peng Wu, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the RSS Workshop on Robotics Methods for Structural and Dynamic Modeling of Molecular Systems, Berkeley, California, July 2014.
Adaptive Neighbor Connection Aids Protein Motion Modeling
Chinwe Ekenna, Shawna Thomas, and Nancy Amato, in Proc. of the RSS Workshop on Robotics Methods for Structural and Dynamic Modeling of Molecular Systems, Berkeley, California, July 2014.
MARRT: Medial Axis Biased Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees
Jory Denny, Evan Greco, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Hong Kong, China, June 2014, pp. 90–97.
Sampling-Based Motion Planning with Reachable Volumes: Theoretical Foundations
Troy McMahon, Shawna Thomas, and Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Hong Kong, China, May 2014, pp. 6514-6521.
UMAPRM: Uniformly Sampling the Medial Axis
Hsin-Yi (Cindy) Yeh, Jory Denny, Aaron Lindsey, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Hong Kong, China, June 2014, pp. 5798–5803.
Blind RRT: A Probabilistically Complete Distributed RRT
Cesar Rodriguez, Jory Denny, Sam Jacobs, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robot Systems (IROS), Tokyo, Japan, November 2013.
Adaptive Neighbor Connection for PRMs: A Natural Fit for Heterogeneous Environments and Parallelism
Chinwe Ekenna, Sam Ade Jacobs, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robot Systems (IROS), Tokyo, Japan, November 2013.
Rigidity Analysis for Protein Motion and Folding Core Identification
Shawna Thomas, Lydia Tapia, Chinwe Ekenna, Hsin-Yi (Cindy) Yeh, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the AAAI Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Methods for Computational Biology, Bellevue, Washington, July 2013.
A Scalable Distributed RRT for Motion Planning
Sam Ade Jacobs, Nicholas Stradford, Cesar Rodriguez, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Karlsruhe, Germany, May 2013, pp. 5088–5095.
UOBPRM: A Uniformly Distributed Obstacle-Based PRM
Cindy (Hsin-Yi) Yeh, Shawna Thomas, David Eppstein, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robot Systems (IROS), Vilamoura, Algarve, Portugal, October 2012, pp. 2655–2662.
A Multi-Directional Rapidly Exploring Random Graph (mRRG) for Protein Folding
Shuvra Nath, Shawna Thomas, Chinwe Ekenna, Nancy M. Amato, in the ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Biomedicine (BCB), Orlando, FL, USA, October 2012, pp. 44–51.
A Scalable Method for Parallelizing Sampling-Based Motion Planning Algorithms
Sam Ade Jacobs, Kasra Manavi, Juan Burgos, Jory Denny, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), St. Paul, Minnesota, May 2012, pp. 2529–2536.
Reachable Distance Space: Efficient Sampling-Based Planning for Spatially Constrained Systems
Xinyu Tang, Shawna Thomas, Philip Coleman, Nancy M. Amato, in the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 29(7): 916–934, 2010.
A Motion Planning Approach to Studying Molecular Motions
Lydia Tapia, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in Communications in Information and Systems (CIS), 10(1): 53–68, 2010.
Planning with Reachable Distances
Xinyu Tang, Shawna Thomas, Nancy M. Amato, in the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics XIII (WAFR 2008), edited by Greg Chirikjian, Howie Choset, Marco Morales, Todd Murphy, Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 57, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009, pp.517–531.
An Unsupervised Adaptive Strategy for Constructing Probabilistic Roadmaps
Lydia Tapia, Shawna Thomas, Bryan Boyd, Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Kobe, Japan, May 2009, pp. 4037–4044.
RESAMPL: A Region-Sensitive Adaptive Motion Planner
Samuel Rodriguez, Shawna Thomas, Roger Pearce, Nancy M. Amato, in the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics XII (WAFR 2006), edited by S. Akella, Nancy M. Amato, W. Huang, B. Mishra, Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 47, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008, pp. 285–300.
Incremental Map Generation (IMG)
Dawen Xie, Marco Morales, Roger Pearce, Shawna Thomas, Jyh-Ming Lien, Nancy M. Amato,
in the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics XII (WAFR 2006), edited by S. Akella, Nancy M. Amato, W. Huang, B. Mishra, Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 47, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008, pp. 53–68.
Simulating RNA Folding Kinetics on Approximated Energy Landscapes
Xinyu Tang, Shawna Thomas, Lydia Tapia, David Giedroc, Nancy M. Amato, in the Journal of Molecular Biology (JMB), 3811(4): 1055-1067, 2008.
Simulating Protein Motions with Rigidity Analysis
Shawna Thomas, Xinyu Tang, Lydia Tapia, and Nancy M. Amato, in the Journal of Computational Biology (JCB), 14(6): 839–855, July 2007.
Kinetics Analysis Methods for Approximate Folding Landscapes
Lydia Tapia, Xinyu Tang, Shawna Thomas, and Nancy M. Amato, in Bioinformatics, 23(13): i539–i548, July 2007. Preliminary version published in Proc. of the International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB)/European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) Vienna, Austria, July 2007.
Planning with Reachable Distances: Fast Enforcement of Closure Constraints
Xinyu Tang, Shawna Thomas, and Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Roma, Italy, April 2007, pp. 2694–2699.
Tools for Simulating and Analyzing RNA Folding Kinetics
Xinyu Tang, Shawna Thomas, Lydia Tapia, and Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the International Conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB), Oakland, CA, April 2007, pp. 268–282.
Biasing Samplers to Improve Motion Planning Performance
Shawna Thomas, Marco Morales, Xinyu Tang, and Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Roma, Italy, April 2007, pp. 1625–1630.
Simulating Protein Motions with Rigidity Analysis
Shawna Thomas, Xinyu Tang, Lydia Tapia, Nancy M. Amato, in Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB 2006), edited by A. Apostolico, C. Guerra, S. Istrail, P. Pevzner, M. Waterman, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3909, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, April 2006, pp. 394-409.
Protein Folding by Motion Planning
Shawna Thomas, Guang Song, and Nancy M. Amato, in Physical Biology, 2:S148–S155, November 2005.
Using Motion Planning to Study RNA Folding Kinetics
Xinyu Tang, Bonnie Kirkpatrick, Shawna Thomas, Guang Song, and Nancy M. Amato, in the Journal of Computational Biology (JCB), 12(6): 862–881, July 2005.
Parallel Protein Folding with STAPL
Shawna Thomas, Gabriel Tanase, Lucia K. Dale, Jose M. Moreira, Lawrence Rauchwerger, and Nancy M. Amato, in Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 17(14): 1643– 1656, December 2005. Preliminary version published in Proc. of the IEEE International Workshop on High Performance Computational Biology (HiCOMB), Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 2004.
Using Motion Planning to Study RNA Folding Kinetics
Xinyu Tang, Bonnie Kirkpatrick, Shawna Thomas, Guang Song, and Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the International Conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB), San Diego, California, March 2004, pp. 252–261.
A General Framework for PRM Motion Planning
Guang Song, Shawna Thomas, and Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Taipei, Taiwan, May 2003, pp. 4445–4450.
A General Framework for Sampling on the Medial Axis of the Free Space
Jyh-Ming Lien, Shawna Thomas, and Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Taipei, Taiwan, May 2003, pp. 4439–4444.
A Path Planning-Based Study of Protein Folding with a Case Study of Hairpin Formation in Protein G and L
Guang Song, Shawna Thomas, Ken A. Dill, J. Martin Scholtz, and Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB), Lihue, Hawaii, January 2003, pp. 240–251.
Customizing PRM Roadmaps at Query Time
Guang Song, Shawna Miller, and Nancy M. Amato, in Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Seoul, Korea, May 2001, pp. 1500–1505.