No Arabic abstract
Currently, state-of-the-art exploration methods maintain high-resolution map representations in order to optimize exploration goals in each step that maximizes information gain. However, during exploring, those optimal selections could quickly become obsolete due to the influx of new information, especially in large-scale environments, and result in high-frequency re-planning that hinders the overall exploration efficiency. In this paper, we propose a graph-based topological planning framework, building a sparse topological map in three-dimensional (3D) space to guide exploration steps with high-level intents so as to render consistent exploration maneuvers. Specifically, this work presents a novel method to estimate 3D spaces geometry with convex polyhedrons. Then, the geometry information is utilized to group space into distinctive regions. And those regions are added as nodes into the topological map, directing the exploration process. We compared our method with the state-of-the-art in simulated environments. The proposed method achieves higher space coverage and outperforms exploration efficiency by more than 40% during experiments. Finally, a field experiment was conducted to further evaluate the applicability of our method to empower efficient and robust exploration in real-world environments.
In order for an autonomous robot to efficiently explore an unknown environment, it must account for uncertainty in sensor measurements, hazard assessment, localization, and motion execution. Making decisions for maximal reward in a stochastic setting requires value learning and policy construction over a belief space, i.e., probability distribution over all possible robot-world states. However, belief space planning in a large spatial environment over long temporal horizons suffers from severe computational challenges. Moreover, constructed policies must safely adapt to unexpected changes in the belief at runtime. This work proposes a scalable value learning framework, PLGRIM (Probabilistic Local and Global Reasoning on Information roadMaps), that bridges the gap between (i) local, risk-aware resiliency and (ii) global, reward-seeking mission objectives. Leveraging hierarchical belief space planners with information-rich graph structures, PLGRIM addresses large-scale exploration problems while providing locally near-optimal coverage plans. We validate our proposed framework with high-fidelity dynamic simulations in diverse environments and on physical robots in Martian-analog lava tubes.
We present a new framework for motion planning that wraps around existing kinodynamic planners and guarantees recursive feasibility when operating in a priori unknown, static environments. Our approach makes strong guarantees about overall safety and collision avoidance by utilizing a robust controller derived from reachability analysis. We ensure that motion plans never exit the safe backward reachable set of the initial state, while safely exploring the space. This preserves the safety of the initial state, and guarantees that that we will eventually find the goal if it is possible to do so while exploring safely. We implement our framework in the Robot Operating System (ROS) software environment and demonstrate it in a real-time simulation.
We propose an approach to solve multi-agent path planning (MPP) problems for complex environments. Our method first designs a special pebble graph with a set of feasibility constraints, under which MPP problems have feasibility guarantee. We further propose an algorithm to greedily improve the optimality of planned MPP solutions via parallel pebble motions. As a second step, we develop a mesh optimization algorithm to embed our pebble graph into arbitrarily complex environments. We show that the feasibility constraints of a pebble graph can be converted into differentiable geometric constraints, such that our mesh optimizer can satisfy these constraints via constrained numerical optimization. We have evaluated the effectiveness and efficiency of our method using a set of environments with complex geometries, on which our method achieves an average of 99.0% free-space coverage and 30.3% robot density within hours of computation on a desktop machine.
Autonomous underwater gliders use buoyancy control to achieve forward propulsion via a sawtooth-like, rise-and-fall trajectory. Because gliders are slow-moving relative to ocean currents, glider control must consider the effect of oceanic flows. In previous work, we proposed a method to control underwater vehicles in the (horizontal) plane by describing such oceanic flows in terms of streamlines, which are the level sets of stream functions. However, the general analytical form of streamlines in 3D is unknown. In this paper, we show how streamline control can be used in 3D environments by assuming a 2.5D model of ocean currents. We provide an efficient algorithm that acts as a steering function for a single rise or dive component of the gliders sawtooth trajectory, integrate this algorithm within a sampling-based motion planning framework to support long-distance path planning, and provide several examples in simulation in comparison with a baseline method. The key to our methods computational efficiency is an elegant dimensionality reduction to a 1D control region. Streamline-based control can be integrated within various sampling-based frameworks and allows for online planning for gliders in complicated oceanic flows.
This paper presents a search-based partial motion planner to generate dynamically feasible trajectories for car-like robots in highly dynamic environments. The planner searches for smooth, safe, and near-time-optimal trajectories by exploring a state graph built on motion primitives, which are generated by discretizing the time dimension and the control space. To enable fast online planning, we first propose an efficient path searching algorithm based on the aggregation and pruning of motion primitives. We then propose a fast collision checking algorithm that takes into account the motions of moving obstacles. The algorithm linearizes relative motions between the robot and obstacles and then checks collisions by comparing a point-line distance. Benefiting from the fast searching and collision checking algorithms, the planner can effectively and safely explore the state-time space to generate near-time-optimal solutions. The results through extensive experiments show that the proposed method can generate feasible trajectories within milliseconds while maintaining a higher success rate than up-to-date methods, which significantly demonstrates its advantages.