Acknowledgments.................................. ii

I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my supervisor, Dr. Mohan Sridharan, whose expertise, understanding, and patience, added considerably to my graduate experience. Mohan was a great source of advice and encouragement, and gave me a lot of freedom in choosing my research focus. Without his guidance and persistent help, this dissertation would not have been possible. I would also like to thank my friends in the Stochastic Estimation and Autonomous Robotics Lab, particularly Shiqi Zhang, for our debates, exchanges of knowledge, skills, and venting of frustration during my graduate program, which helped enrich the experience. I must also acknowledge my committee members, Dr. J. Nelson Rushton, Dr. Hamed Sari-Sarraf and Dr. Peter Stone for their help and advice. I would also like to thank my family for the support they provided me through my entire life, and in particular, I must acknowledge my wife, Yue, without whose love, encouragement and editing assistance, I would not have finished this dissertation