Robots are increasingly expected to go beyond controlled environments in laboratories and factories, to act autonomously in real-world workplaces and public spaces. Autonomous robots navigating the real world have to contend with a great deal of uncertainty, which poses additional challenges. Uncertainty in the real world accrues from several sources. Some of it may originate from imperfect internal models of reality. Other uncertainty is inherent, a direct side effect of partial observability induced by sensor limitations and occlusions. Regardless of the source, the resulting decision problem is unfortunately computationally intractable under uncertainty. This poses a great challenge as the real world is also dynamic. It  will not pause while the robot computes a solution. Autonomous robots navigating among people, for example in traffic, need to be able to make split-second decisions. Uncertainty is therefore often neglected in practice, with potentially catastrophic consequences when something unexpected happens. The aim of this thesis is to leverage recent advances in machine learning to compute safe real-time approximations to decision-making under uncertainty for real-world robots. We explore a range of methods, from probabilistic to deep learning, as well as different combinations with optimization-based methods from robotics, planning and control. Driven by applications in robot navigation, and grounded in experiments with real autonomous quadcopters, we address several parts of this problem. From reducing uncertainty by learning better models, to directly approximating the decision problem itself, all the while attempting to satisfy both the safety and real-time requirements of real-world autonomy.

Accurate statistical analysis of spatial data is important in many applications. Failing to properly account for spatial autocorrelation may often lead to false conclusions. At the same time, the ever-increasing sizes of spatial datasets pose a great computational challenge, as many standard methods for spatial analysis are limited to a few thousand data points.

In this thesis, we explore how Gaussian Markov random fields (GMRFs) can be used for scalable analysis of spatial data. GMRFs are closely connected to the commonly used Gaussian processes, but have sparsity properties that make them computationally cheap both in time and memory. The Bayesian framework enables a GMRF to be used as a spatial prior, comprising the assumption of smooth variation over space, and gives a principled way to estimate the parameters and propagate uncertainty.

We develop new algorithms that enable applying GMRF priors in 3D to the brain activity inherent in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, with millions of observations. We show that our methods are both faster and more accurate than previous work. A method for approximating selected elements of the inverse precision matrix (i.e. the covariance matrix) is also proposed, which is important for evaluating the posterior uncertainty. In addition, we establish a link between GMRFs and deep convolutional neural networks, which have been successfully used in countless machine learning tasks for images, resulting in a deep GMRF model. Finally, we show how GMRFs can be used in real-time robotic search and rescue operations, for modeling the spatial distribution of injured persons.

Tillförlitlig statistisk analys av spatiala data är viktigt inom många tillämpningar. Om inte korrekt hänsyn tas till spatial autokorrelation kan det ofta leda till felaktiga slutsatser. Samtidigt ökar ständigt storleken på de spatiala datamaterialen vilket utgör en stor beräkningsmässig utmaning, eftersom många standardmetoder för spatial analys är begränsade till några tusental datapunkter.

I denna avhandling utforskar vi hur Gaussiska Markov-fält (eng: Gaussian Markov random fields, GMRF) kan användas för mer skalbara analyser av spatiala data. GMRF-modeller är nära besläktade med de ofta använda Gaussiska processerna, men har gleshetsegenskaper som gör dem beräkningsmässigt effektiva både vad gäller tids- och minnesåtgång. Det Bayesianska synsättet gör det möjligt att använda GMRF som en spatial prior som innefattar antagandet om långsam spatial variation och ger ett principiellt tillvägagångssätt för att skatta parametrar och propagera osäkerhet.

Vi utvecklar nya algoritmer som gör det möjligt att använda GMRF-priors i 3D för den hjärnaktivitet som indirekt kan observeras i hjärnbilder framtagna med tekniken fMRI, som innehåller milliontals datapunkter. Vi visar att våra metoder är både snabbare och mer korrekta än tidigare forskning. En metod för att approximera utvalda element i den inversa precisionsmatrisen (dvs. kovariansmatrisen) framförs också, vilket är viktigt för att kunna evaluera osäkerheten i posteriorn. Vidare gör vi en koppling mellan GMRF och djupa neurala faltningsnätverk, som har använts framgångsrikt för mängder av bildrelaterade problem inom maskininlärning, vilket mynnar ut i en djup GMRF-modell. Slutligen visar vi hur GMRF kan användas i realtid av autonoma drönare för räddningsinsatser i katastrofområden för att modellera den spatiala fördelningen av skadade personer.