Autonomous Waypoint Generation with Safety Guarantees: On-Line Motion Planning in Unknown Environments
University of Alberta（阿尔伯塔大学）
Sanjeev Sharma
备注：
This paper was accepted for publication in the International Conference on Advanced Robotics 2013. It was not included in the final proceedings of the conference as I was unable to attend the conference to present the paper
On-line motion planning in unknown environments is a challenging problem as it requires (i) ensuring collision avoidance and (ii) minimizing the motion time, while continuously predicting where to go next. Previous approaches to on-line motion planning assume that a rough map of the environment is available, thereby simplifying the problem. This paper presents a reactive on-line motion planner, Robust Autonomous Waypoint generation (RAW), for mobile robots navigating in unknown and unstructured environments. RAW generates a locally maximal ellipsoid around the robot, using semi-definite programming, such that the surrounding obstacles lie outside the ellipsoid. A reinforcement learning agent then generates a local waypoint in the robot's field of view, inside the ellipsoid. The robot navigates to the waypoint and the process iterates until it reaches the goal. By following the waypoints the robot navigates through a sequence of overlapping ellipsoids, and avoids collision. Robot's safety is guaranteed theoretically and the claims are validated through rigorous numerical experiments in four different experimental setups. Near-optimality is shown empirically by comparing RAW trajectories with the global optimal trajectories.
Texas A & M University（德克萨斯农工大学）；Infoscitex Corp.（Infoscitex公司）
This article considers two variants of a shortest path problem for a car-like robot visiting a set of waypoints. The sequence of waypoints to be visited is specified in the first variant while the robot is allowed to visit the waypoints in any sequence in the second variant. Field of view constraints are also placed when the robot arrives at a waypoint, i.e., the orientation of the robot at any waypoint is restricted to belong to a given interval of angles at the waypoint. The shortest path problem is first solved for two waypoints with the field of view constraints using Pontryagin's minimum …
Robust Mobile Robot Path Planning via LLM-Based Dynamic Waypoint Generation
College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics（南京航空航天大学自动化工程学院）；School of Computer Science and Mathematics, Liverpool John Moores University（利物浦约翰摩尔斯大学计算机科学与数学学院）
Indoor motion planning focuses on solving the problem of navigating an agent through a cluttered environment. To date, quite a lot of work has been done in this field, but these methods often fail to find the optimal balance between computationally inexpensive online path planning, and optimality of the path. Along with this, these works often prove optimality for single-start single-goal worlds. To address these challenges, we present a multiple waypoint path planner and controller stack for navigation in unknown indoor environments where waypoints include the goal along with the intermediary…
Imperial College London（伦敦帝国理工学院）；Ryerson University（瑞尔森大学）
With the recent advances in machine learning, path planning algorithms are also evolving; however, the learned path planning algorithms often have difficulty competing with success rates of classic algorithms. We propose waypoint planning networks (WPN), a hybrid algorithm based on LSTMs with a local kernel - a classic algorithm such as A*, and a global kernel using a learned algorithm. WPN produces a more computationally efficient and robust solution. We compare WPN against A*, as well as related works including motion planning networks (MPNet) and value iteration networks (VIN). In this pape…
Robot Local Planner: A Periodic Sampling-Based Motion Planner with Minimal Waypoints for Home Environments
Frontier Research Center, Toyota Motor Corporation（丰田汽车公司前沿研究中心）；Department of Information Science, Faculty of Information Science, Aichi Institute of Technology（爱知技术大学信息科学系）
Automation and Control Institute (ACIN), TU Wien（维也纳工业大学自动化与控制研究所）；Center for Vision, Automation and Control, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology（奥地利技术研究所视觉、自动化与控制中心）；Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool（利物浦大学计算机科学系）
This paper presents a two-step algorithm for online trajectory planning in indoor environments with unknown obstacles. In the first step, sampling-based path planning techniques such as the optimal Rapidly exploring Random Tree (RRT*) algorithm and the Line-of-Sight (LOS) algorithm are employed to generate a collision-free path consisting of multiple waypoints. Then, in the second step, constrained quadratic programming is utilized to compute a smooth trajectory that passes through all computed waypoints. The main contribution of this work is the development of a flexible trajectory planning f…
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）
We tackle the challenging problem of multi-agent cooperative motion planning for complex tasks described using signal temporal logic (STL), where robots can have nonlinear and nonholonomic dynamics. Existing methods in multi-agent motion planning, especially those based on discrete abstractions and model predictive control (MPC), suffer from limited scalability with respect to the complexity of the task, the size of the workspace, and the planning horizon. We present a method based on {\em timed waypoints\/} to address this issue. We show that timed waypoints can help abstract nonlinear behavi…
This paper introduces Probabilistic Chekov (p-Chekov), a chance-constrained motion planning system that can be applied to high degree-of-freedom (DOF) robots under motion uncertainty and imperfect state information. Given process and observation noise models, it can find feasible trajectories which satisfy a user-specified bound over the probability of collision. Leveraging our previous work in deterministic motion planning which integrated trajectory optimization into a sparse roadmap framework, p-Chekov shows superiority in its planning speed for high-dimensional tasks. P-Chekov incorporates…
University of Washington（华盛顿大学）；Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）
We introduce a functional gradient descent trajectory optimization algorithm for robot motion planning in Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces (RKHSs). Functional gradient algorithms are a popular choice for motion planning in complex many-degree-of-freedom robots, since they (in theory) work by directly optimizing within a space of continuous trajectories to avoid obstacles while maintaining geometric properties such as smoothness. However, in practice, functional gradient algorithms typically commit to a fixed, finite parameterization of trajectories, often as a list of waypoints. Such a parame…
Multi-Step Gaussian Process Propagation for Adaptive Path Planning
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校电子工程与计算机科学系）；Department of Engineering Cybernetics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)（挪威科技与自然大学（NTNU）工程控制系）；Department of Electronic Systems, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)（挪威科技与自然大学（NTNU）电子系统系）
Planning Jerk-Optimized Trajectory with Discrete-Time Constraints for Redundant Robots
Delft University of Technology (TU Delft)（代尔夫特理工大学）；INRIA（法国国家信息与自动化研究所）；The Hong Kong Polytechnic University（香港理工大学）；The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)（香港中文大学）
This paper presents a novel data-driven approach to vehicle motion planning and control in off-road driving scenarios. For autonomous off-road driving, environmental conditions impact terrain traversability as a function of weather, surface composition, and slope. Geographical information system (GIS) and National Centers for Environmental Information datasets are processed to provide this information for interactive planning and control system elements. A top-level global route planner (GRP) defines optimal waypoints using dynamic programming (DP). A local path planner (LPP) computes a desire…
Politecnico di Torino（都灵理工大学）；PIC4SeR (PoliTo Interdepartmental Centre for Service Robotics)（PIC4SeR（都灵理工大学服务机器人跨部门中心））
The development of precision agriculture has gradually introduced automation in the agricultural process to support and rationalize all the activities related to field management. In particular, service robotics plays a predominant role in this evolution by deploying autonomous agents able to navigate in fields while executing different tasks without the need for human intervention, such as monitoring, spraying and harvesting. In this context, global path planning is the first necessary step for every robotic mission and ensures that the navigation is performed efficiently and with complete fi…
Space exploration missions have seen use of increasingly sophisticated robotic systems with ever more autonomy. Deep learning promises to take this even a step further, and has applications for high-level tasks, like path planning, as well as low-level tasks, like motion control, which are critical components for mission efficiency and success. Using deep reinforcement end-to-end learning with randomized reward function parameters during training, we teach a simulated 8 degree-of-freedom quadruped ant-like robot to travel anywhere within a perimeter, conducting path plan and motion control on …
We consider the problem of risk-sensitive motion planning in the presence of randomly moving obstacles. To this end, we adopt a model predictive control (MPC) scheme and pose the obstacle avoidance constraint in the MPC problem as a distributionally robust constraint with a KL divergence ambiguity set. This constraint is the dual representation of the Entropic Value-at-Risk (EVaR). Building upon this viewpoint, we propose an algorithm to follow waypoints and discuss its feasibility and completion in finite time. We compare the policies obtained using EVaR with those obtained using another comm…
This paper presents a sequential Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach to reactive motion planning for bipedal robots in dynamic environments. The approach relies on a sequential polytopic decomposition of the free space, which provides an ordered collection of mutually intersecting obstacle free polytopes and waypoints. These are subsequently used to define a corresponding sequence of MPC programs that drive the system to a goal location avoiding static and moving obstacles. This way, the planner focuses on the free space in the vicinity of the robot, thus alleviating the need to consider a…
In this paper, we present an autonomous navigation system for goal-driven exploration of unknown environments through deep reinforcement learning (DRL). Points of interest (POI) for possible navigation directions are obtained from the environment and an optimal waypoint is selected, based on the available data. Following the waypoints, the robot is guided towards the global goal and the local optimum problem of reactive navigation is mitigated. Then, a motion policy for local navigation is learned through a DRL framework in a simulation. We develop a navigation system where this learned policy…
Motion Planning Diffusion: Learning and Adapting Robot Motion Planning with Diffusion Models
Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab, Computer Science Department, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany（德意志图林根技术大学计算机科学系智能自主系统实验室）；Poznan University of Technology, Poland（波兰波兹南技术大学）；IDEAS, Warsaw, Poland（波兰华沙IDEAS）；Centre for Cognitive Science, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany（德意志图林根技术大学认知科学中心）；German Research Center for AI (DFKI), Research Department: SAIROL, Darmstadt, Germany（德国人工智能研究中心（DFKI）研究部：SAIROL，德意志图林根，德国）；Hessian.AI, Darmstadt, Germany（黑森AI，德意志图林根，德国）
We present a method to solve planning problems involving sequential decision making in unpredictable environments while accomplishing a high level task specification expressed using the formalism of linear temporal logic. Our method improves the state of the art by introducing a pruning step that preserves correctness while significantly reducing the time needed to compute an optimal policy. Our theoretical contribution is coupled with simulations substantiating the value of the proposed method.
This paper reports on developing an integrated framework for safety-aware informative motion planning suitable for legged robots. The information-gathering planner takes a dense stochastic map of the environment into account, while safety constraints are enforced via Control Barrier Functions (CBFs). The planner is based on the Incrementally-exploring Information Gathering (IIG) algorithm and allows closed-loop kinodynamic node expansion using a Model Predictive Control (MPC) formalism. Robotic exploration and information gathering problems are inherently path-dependent problems. That is, the …
Local Path Planning and Obstacle Avoidance for an Omnicopter Platform
Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology（代尔夫特理工大学航空航天工程学院）；Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence（穆罕默德·本·扎耶德人工智能大学）；Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, New York University Abu Dhabi（纽约大学阿布扎比分校人工智能与机器人中心）
School of Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University（清华大学车辆与运载学院）；State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Green Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University（清华大学智能网联汽车与交通国家重点实验室）
University of Technology Sydney（悉尼科技大学）；UTS Robotics Institute（悉尼科技大学机器人研究所）
Inertial-aided systems require continuous motion excitation among other reasons to characterize the measurement biases that will enable accurate integration required for localization frameworks. This paper proposes the use of informative path planning to find the best trajectory for minimizing the uncertainty of IMU biases and an adaptive traces method to guide the planner towards trajectories which aid convergence. The key contribution is a novel regression method based on Gaussian Process (GP) to enforce continuity and differentiability between waypoints from a variant of the RRT* planning a…
University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；X, the Moonshot Factory（X（登月工厂））
Efficient trajectory optimization is essential for avoiding collisions in unstructured environments, but it remains challenging to have both speed and quality in the solutions. One reason is that second-order optimality requires calculating Hessian matrices that can grow with $O(N^2)$ with the number of waypoints. Decreasing the waypoints can quadratically decrease computation time. Unfortunately, fewer waypoints result in lower quality trajectories that may not avoid the collision. To have both, dense waypoints and reduced computation time, we took inspiration from recent studies on consensus…
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology（莫斯科物理技术学院）；LLC “Integrant”（Integrant有限责任公司）；Federal Research Center “Computer Science and Control” RAS（俄罗斯科学院联邦研究中心“计算机科学与控制”）
Kinodynamic motion planning for non-holomonic mobile robots is a challenging problem that is lacking a universal solution. One of the computationally efficient ways to solve it is to build a geometric path first and then transform this path into a kinematically feasible one. Gradient-informed Path Smoothing (GRIPS) is a recently introduced method for such transformation. GRIPS iteratively deforms the path and adds/deletes the waypoints while trying to connect each consecutive pair of them via the provided steering function that respects the kinematic constraints. The algorithm is relatively fa…
NaviFormer: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Transformer-like Model to Holistically Solve the Navigation Problem
Grupo de Tratamiento de Imágenes, Information Processing and Telecommunications Center, ETSI Telecomunicación, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid（图像处理与电信中心，信息处理与电信中心，电信工程学院，马德里理工大学）；Idiap Research Institute（Idiap研究机构）
Autonomous vehicles need to plan at the task level to compute a sequence of symbolic actions, such as merging left and turning right, to fulfill people's service requests, where efficiency is the main concern. At the same time, the vehicles must compute continuous trajectories to perform actions at the motion level, where safety is the most important. Task-motion planning in autonomous driving faces the problem of maximizing task-level efficiency while ensuring motion-level safety. To this end, we develop algorithm Task-Motion Planning for Urban Driving (TMPUD) that, for the first time, enable…
