Cost distribution construction for pessimistic tree search

A computer program product for evaluating a next action of a target object in an environment, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a computer to cause the computer to perform a method comprising:

• simulating, for each of possible actions of the target object in the environment, a next state occurring thereafter to obtain a plurality of simulated next states, based on a pessimistic scenario which is randomly generated by sampling a plurality of costs from a distribution of cost, the distribution of cost being an area where the target object is to visit in a future;
• identifying a safety area for the target object in each of the plurality of simulated next states;
• and
• evaluating each of the possible actions of the target object, based on the safety area,
• wherein the plurality of costs are one or more obstacles, the target object is drone, and the distribution of cost is defined as an ellipse whose size is determined by a displacement which is calculated by a linear motion with a maximum acceleration.

A computer processing system for evaluating a next action of a target object in an environment, comprising:

• a memory device including program code stored thereon;
• a hardware processor, operatively coupled to the memory device, and configured to run the program code stored on the memory device to
• simulate, for each of possible actions of the target object in the environment, a next state occurring thereafter to obtain a plurality of simulated next states, based on a pessimistic scenario which is randomly generated by sampling a plurality of costs from a distribution of cost, the distribution of cost being an area where the target object is to visit in a future;
• identify a safety area for the target object in each of the plurality of simulated next states;
• and
• evaluate each of the possible actions of the target object, based on the safety area,
• wherein the plurality of costs are one or more obstacles, the target object is drone, and the distribution of cost is defined as an ellipse whose size is determined by a displacement which is calculated by a linear motion with a maximum acceleration.