Adaptive sensing of time series with application to remote exploration

We address the problem of adaptive information-optimal data collection in time series. Here a remote sensor or explorer agent throttles its sampling rate in order to track anomalous events while obeying constraints on time and power. This problem is challenging because the agent has limited visibility - all collected datapoints lie in the past, but its resource allocation decisions require predicting far into the future. Our solution is to continually fit a Gaussian process model to the latest data and optimize the sampling plan on line to maximize information gain. We compare the performance characteristics of stationary and nonstationary Gaussian process models. We also describe an application based on geologic analysis during planetary rover exploration. Here adaptive sampling can improve coverage of localized anomalies and potentially benefit mission science yield of long autonomous traverses.