Task planning for mobile robots often assumes full environment knowledge and so popular approaches, like planning via the PDDL, cannot plan when the locations of task-critical objects are unknown. Recent learning-driven object search approaches are effective, but operate as standalone tools and so are not straightforwardly incorporated into full task planners, which must additionally determine both what objects are necessary and when in the plan they should be sought out. To address this limitation, we develop a planning framework centered around novel model-based LIOS actions: each a policy that aims to find and retrieve a single object. High-level planning treats LIOS actions as deterministic and so -- informed by model-based calculations of the expected cost of each -- generates plans that interleave search and execution for effective, sound, and complete learning-informed task planning despite uncertainty. Our work effectively reasons about uncertainty while maintaining compatibility with existing full-knowledge solvers. In simulated ProcTHOR homes and in the real world, our approach outperforms non-learned and learned baselines on tasks including retrieval and meal prep.
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）
It is critical to predict the motion of surrounding vehicles for self-driving planning, especially in a socially compliant and flexible way. However, future prediction is challenging due to the interaction and uncertainty in driving behaviors. We propose planning-informed trajectory prediction (PiP) to tackle the prediction problem in the multi-agent setting. Our approach is differentiated from the traditional manner of prediction, which is only based on historical information and decoupled with planning. By informing the prediction process with the planning of ego vehicle, our method achieves…
University of Michigan（密歇根大学）；NASA Ames Research Center（美国国家航空航天局艾姆斯研究中心）
With the number of small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) in the national airspace projected to increase in the next few years, there is growing interest in a traffic management system capable of handling the demands of this aviation sector. It is expected that such a system will involve trajectory prediction, uncertainty propagation, and path planning algorithms. In this work, we use linear covariance propagation in combination with a quadratic programming-based collision detection algorithm to rapidly validate declared flight plans. Additionally, these algorithms are combined with a Dynamic,…
Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research（荷兰应用科学研究组织）；Eindhoven University of Technology（埃因霍温理工大学）
The urban environment is amongst the most difficult domains for autonomous vehicles. The vehicle must be able to plan a safe route on challenging road layouts, in the presence of various dynamic traffic participants such as vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians and in various environmental conditions. The challenge remains to have motion planners that are computationally fast and that account for future movements of other road users proactively. This paper describes an computationally efficient sampling-based trajectory planner for safe and comfortable driving in urban environments. The planner i…
Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院机器人与智能机器研究所）
Anytime sampling-based methods are an attractive technique for solving kino-dynamic motion planning problems. These algorithms scale well to higher dimensions and can efficiently handle state and control constraints. However, an intelligent exploration strategy is required to accelerate their convergence and avoid redundant computations. Using ideas from reachability analysis, this work defines a "Time-Informed Set", that focuses the search for time-optimal kino-dynamic planning after an initial solution is found. Such a Time-Informed Set (TIS) includes all trajectories that can potentially im…
In this paper, we deal with the problem of full-body path planning for walking robots. The state of walking robots is defined in multi-dimensional space. Path planning requires defining the path of the feet and the robot's body. Moreover, the planner should check multiple constraints like static stability, self-collisions, collisions with the terrain, and the legs' workspace. As a result, checking the feasibility of the potential path is time-consuming and influences the performance of a planning method. In this paper, we verify the feasibility of sampling-based planners in the path planning t…
In this work, we present a novel sampling-based path planning method, called SPRINT. The method finds solutions for high dimensional path planning problems quickly and robustly. Its efficiency comes from minimizing the number of collision check samples. This reduction in sampling relies on heuristics that predict the likelihood that samples will be useful in the search process. Specifically, heuristics (1) prioritize more promising search regions; (2) cull samples from local minima regions; and (3) steer the search away from previously observed collision states. Empirical evaluations show that…
TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology, Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学计算、信息与技术学院）；TUM School of Engineering and Design, Technical University Munich（慕尼黑工业大学工程与设计学院）
GAIDE: Graph-based Attention Masking for Spatial- and Embodiment-aware Motion Planning
J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA（J. Mike Walker ’66 机械工程系，德克萨斯A&M大学，College Station, TX 77843, USA）；Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843 USA（Zachry 市政与环境工程系，德克萨斯A&M大学，College Station, TX 77843 USA）
Informed sampling-based planning algorithms exploit problem knowledge for better search performance. This knowledge is often expressed as heuristic estimates of solution cost and used to order the search. The practical improvement of this informed search depends on the accuracy of the heuristic. Selecting an appropriate heuristic is difficult. Heuristics applicable to an entire problem domain are often simple to define and inexpensive to evaluate but may not be beneficial for a specific problem instance. Heuristics specific to a problem instance are often difficult to define or expensive to ev…
RIT*: Riemannian Informed Trees for Cost-Adaptive Optimal Motion Planning
Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems, Khalifa University（哈利法大学自主机器人系统中心）；Institute of Industrial and Control Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya（加泰罗尼亚理工大学工业与控制工程研究所）
Rice University（莱斯大学）；Jet Propulsion Laboratory（喷气推进实验室）；California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；University of Oxford（牛津大学）
High-level autonomy requires discrete and continuous reasoning to decide both what actions to take and how to execute them. Integrated Task and Motion Planning (TMP) algorithms solve these hybrid problems jointly to consider constraints between the discrete symbolic actions (i.e., the task plan) and their continuous geometric realization (i.e., motion plans). This joint approach solves more difficult problems than approaches that address the task and motion subproblems independently. TMP algorithms combine and extend results from both task and motion planning. TMP has mainly focused on computa…
Path planning through complex obstacle spaces is a fundamental requirement of many mobile robot applications. Recently a rapid convergence path planning algorithm, Batch Informed Trees (BIT*), was introduced. This work serves as a concise write-up and explanation of BIT*. This work includes a description of BIT* and how BIT* operates, a graphical demonstration of BIT*, and simulation results where BIT* is compared to Optimal Rapidly-exploring Random Trees (RRT*).
Loughborough University（拉夫堡大学）；Defence Science and Technology Laboratory（国防科学技术实验室）
The use of autonomous vehicles for chemical source localisation is a key enabling tool for disaster response teams to safely and efficiently deal with chemical emergencies. Whilst much work has been performed on source localisation using autonomous systems, most previous works have assumed an open environment or employed simplistic obstacle avoidance, separate to the estimation procedure. In this paper, we explore the coupling of the path planning task for both source term estimation and obstacle avoidance in a holistic framework. The proposed system intelligently produces potential gas sampli…
Flexible Informed Trees (FIT*): Adaptive Batch-Size Approach in Informed Sampling-Based Path Planning
Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich（信息学院，慕尼黑技术大学）；Department of Technology & Innovation, KION Group Linde Material Handling GmbH（技术与创新学院，KION集团Linde物料处理 GmbH）
Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）；University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学）；University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies（多伦多大学航空航天研究所）
Anytime almost-surely asymptotically optimal planners, such as RRT*, incrementally find paths to every state in the search domain. This is inefficient once an initial solution is found as then only states that can provide a better solution need to be considered. Exact knowledge of these states requires solving the problem but can be approximated with heuristics. This paper formally defines these sets of states and demonstrates how they can be used to analyze arbitrary planning problems. It uses the well-known $L^2$ norm (i.e., Euclidean distance) to analyze minimum-path-length problems and sho…
Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology（卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院人类工程与机器人研究所）；Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Institute of Applied Research, Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences（卡尔斯鲁厄应用技术大学应用研究所机器人与自主系统部）
Informative path planning is an important and challenging problem in robotics that remains to be solved in a manner that allows for wide-spread implementation and real-world practical adoption. Among various reasons for this, one is the lack of approaches that allow for informative path planning in high-dimensional spaces and non-trivial sensor constraints. In this work we present a sampling-based approach that allows us to tackle the challenges of large and high-dimensional search spaces. This is done by performing informed sampling in the high-dimensional continuous space and incorporating p…
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学机器人研究所）；Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington（华盛顿大学保罗·G·艾伦计算机科学与工程学院）
Asymptotically-optimal motion planners such as RRT* have been shown to incrementally approximate the shortest path between start and goal states. Once an initial solution is found, their performance can be dramatically improved by restricting subsequent samples to regions of the state space that can potentially improve the current solution. When the motion planning problem lies in a Euclidean space, this region $X_{inf}$, called the informed set, can be sampled directly. However, when planning with differential constraints in non-Euclidean state spaces, no analytic solutions exists to sampling…
Batch Informed Trees (BIT*): Sampling-based Optimal Planning via the Heuristically Guided Search of Implicit Random Geometric Graphs
Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学）；Canadian Space Agency（加拿大航天局）；Defence Research and Development Canada（加拿大国防研究与发展部）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；National Aeronautics and Space Administration（美国国家航空航天局）；Northern Centre for Advanced Technology Inc.（北方先进技术中心公司）；Ontario Drive and Gear Ltd.（安大略传动与齿轮有限公司）；Office of Naval Research（美国海军研究办公室）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）；University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学）；University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies（多伦多大学航空航天研究所）
Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）；University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学）；University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies（多伦多大学航空航天研究所）
Path planning in robotics often requires finding high-quality solutions to continuously valued and/or high-dimensional problems. These problems are challenging and most planning algorithms instead solve simplified approximations. Popular approximations include graphs and random samples, as respectively used by informed graph-based searches and anytime sampling-based planners. Informed graph-based searches, such as A*, traditionally use heuristics to search a priori graphs in order of potential solution quality. This makes their search efficient but leaves their performance dependent on the cho…
Asymptotically optimal sampling-based planners require an intelligent exploration strategy to accelerate convergence. After an initial solution is found, a necessary condition for improvement is to generate new samples in the so-called "Informed Set". However, Informed Sampling can be ineffective in focusing search if the chosen heuristic fails to provide a good estimate of the solution cost. This work proposes an algorithm to sample the "Relevant Region" instead, which is a subset of the Informed Set. The Relevant Region utilizes cost-to-come information from the planner's tree structure, red…
Estimated Informed Anytime Search for Sampling-Based Planning via Adaptive Sampler
Chair of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Real-time Systems, TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology (CIT), Technical University of Munich（机器人、人工智能与实时系统教授会，技术大学慕尼黑计算、信息与技术学院）；Chair of Robotics and Systems Intelligence, Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), Technical University of Munich（机器人与系统智能教授会，慕尼黑机器人与机器智能研究所，技术大学慕尼黑）；State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology and the School of Science and Technology, Nanjing University (Suzhou Campus)（新型软件技术国家重点实验室和南京大学（苏州校区）科学与技术学院）；School of Control Science and Engineering, Shandong University（控制科学与工程学院，山东大学）
Just in time Informed Trees: Manipulability-Aware Asymptotically Optimized Motion Planning
Human-Robot Interfaces and Interaction(HRI2), Istituto Italiano Di Tecnologia (IIT)（人机交互（HRI2），意大利技术研究所（IIT））；Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne (EPFL)（洛桑联邦理工学院（EPFL））；Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑技术大学）；School of Control Science and Engineering, Shandong University（控制科学与工程学院，山东大学）；School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, UK（计算机科学学院，诺丁汉大学（英国））
Nearest-Neighbourless Asymptotically Optimal Motion Planning with Fully Connected Informed Trees (FCIT*)
Estimation, Search, and Planning (ESP) Research Group, Queen’s University, Kingston ON, Canada（皇后大学估计、搜索与规划研究组）；Department of Computer Science, Rice University, Houston TX, USA（里士满大学计算机科学系）；Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette IN, USA（普渡大学计算机科学系）；Ken Kennedy Institute, Rice University, Houston TX, USA（里士满大学肯尼迪研究所）
Neural Motion Planners (NMPs) have emerged as a promising tool for solving robot navigation tasks in complex environments. However, these methods often require expert data for learning, which limits their application to scenarios where data generation is time-consuming. Recent developments have also led to physics-informed deep neural models capable of representing complex dynamical Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). Inspired by these developments, we propose Neural Time Fields (NTFields) for robot motion planning in cluttered scenarios. Our framework represents a wave propagation model ge…
Greedy Heuristics for Sampling-Based Motion Planning in High-Dimensional State Spaces
University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies（多伦多大学航空航天研究所）；Ton Duc Thang University（越南 ton duc thang 大学（东德盛大学））；Singapore University of Technology and Design（新加坡科技设计大学）
Optimal path planning is the problem of finding a valid sequence of states between a start and goal that optimizes an objective. Informed path planning algorithms order their search with problem-specific knowledge expressed as heuristics and can be orders of magnitude more efficient than uninformed algorithms. Heuristics are most effective when they are both accurate and computationally inexpensive to evaluate, but these are often conflicting characteristics. This makes the selection of appropriate heuristics difficult for many problems. This paper presents two almost-surely asymptotically opt…
Univ. of Michigan（密歇根大学）；Rutgers Univ.（罗格斯大学）；Tel Aviv Univ.（特拉维夫大学）
Many exciting robotic applications require multiple robots with many degrees of freedom, such as manipulators, to coordinate their motion in a shared workspace. Discovering high-quality paths in such scenarios can be achieved, in principle, by exploring the composite space of all robots. Sampling-based planners do so by building a roadmap or a tree data structure in the corresponding configuration space and can achieve asymptotic optimality. The hardness of motion planning, however, renders the explicit construction of such structures in the composite space of multiple robots impractical. This…
